


Command Potential

by TheUndeadBegonia (MagnoliaAnaglypta)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-22 11:36:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 62,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14307819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagnoliaAnaglypta/pseuds/TheUndeadBegonia
Summary: A post 30 days story.  This deals with depression, which may be uncomfortable for some readers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins somewhere during the period between the episodes ‘Latent Image’ and ‘Bride of Chaotica’. It should be assumed that canon diverges from this point and the events of future episodes may or may not occur, or may not occur in the same way. The first part of this story is entirely from Paris’ point of view as the emotional ramifications of his actions in ‘Thirty Days’ start to kick in.

He opened his eyes to the usual gloom of his windowless quarters, rolled over slightly, and his cheek encountered the wet spot.  Fuzzily, he brought his hand up to investigate.

_Damn it._

He'd cried himself to sleep again.

 

It was morning.  Time to get up.  Another day to get through.   He rolled out of bed and reached for the dressing gown he habitually kept nearby, in case of a red alert and an emergency summons to the bridge.  Although these days, the summons might come, not to him, but to the other one instead. 

The Upstart. 

The Replacement. 

The new Golden Boy. 

_You did wrong.  You were punished.  Get over it._

It had become a mantra, playing over and over in his brain.   Mostly it was his own inner voice, but it could just as easily have been anyone else in the crew; they all thought the same thing. 

Why couldn't he just get past it?  Accept it and move on?

 

He dragged his sorry butt into the bathroom and dressed, checking the mirror to confirm that he was neat and tidy, that there were no signs of the tears.  He flinched, as he did every morning, at the hollow-eyed image that stared back at him.   He didn't know which part of that image he despised most; the single pip glaring at him on his collar, or the person inside the uniform who didn't seem to be able to pull himself together the way everybody thought he should.  It was only a rank, goddammit!  He'd been lucky to have it in the first place.

But it wasn't, not any more.  It was trust, being valued, an easy, friendly relationship with people he had allowed to get close enough that they could hurt him now without even really trying.   It was the cold expression in HER eyes every time she looked at him, and the fun people seemed to get out of using the hated word.   And more than anything, it was the gloating that he wasn't top dog anymore, that there was someone who could do his job just as well as he could - who had been doing it while he, the fallen, was sitting on the floor in the brig having helpless nightmares about his emotionally abusive childhood.   And it was about the knowledge that this time, he couldn't blame it on a mistake, that he had made a deliberate choice and, given the same circumstances, he might very well choose to do the same thing again.  How could he, or anyone else, ever trust his judgement again? 

If only they didn't take such delight reminding him of it.  Reminding him how he'd blown it, when for the first time in his life, he'd had everything to live for, hope for the future, respect and a feeling of belonging.  Last time, he realised, had been easier.  Filled with the arrogant stupidity of youth, he’d wallowed in it then, played up to it, revelled, in a perverse sort of way, in the notoriety it had brought him, knowing that eighteen months down the line he'd be just another anonymous drifter, free to cut all the associations that burned in his memory.  Free to try and define another kind of life for himself, if he had the courage.  Or maybe he would just have taken refuge in drink somewhere dark, and let his life drift away.

He didn't have that option now, which was both comforting and terrifying.  He had to work through it, try to prove himself again.  No escape from the situation or his mistake, or even from himself.  He had thought he had known the price he was paying, but he hadn't been prepared for the pain.  It was a dull, nagging ache somewhere in the region of a heart that he had not practised defensive manoeuvres against for four years now and it had caught him by surprise, sometimes flaring into a white-hot burning that told him how much pride was still alive inside him, and how he was still capable of feeling the kind of humiliation he thought he'd left behind forever. 

This place, these people, were the entire extent of his horizons for the foreseeable future, for as long as this journey lasted, which might be the rest of his life.   Bridge duty, sickbay duty, quarters, sleep.    Defensive manoeuvres.  Know thy enemy.   Starfleet was the enemy, just as it had been last time, its rigid protocols and hierarchies that gave only those at the top the right to individuality and free choice.   Know how thy enemy thinks.   The padd resting on his desk contained the full text of Starfleet Operational Protocols and Regulations.  Well, it was a cure for insomnia if nothing else.

 

First step today, bridge duty.  0.800 hours.  He'd skip breakfast, the rec room was too busy at this time of day, and the sick feeling in his stomach didn't usually go away until at least an hour into his shift.  Allow one minute to get from his quarters to the turbo lift, twenty three seconds for the travel from deck four to the bridge, a small margin for joiners on decks three and two.  Arrive the recommended two and a half minutes early for shift change over, no more, no less.  And win yet another bet with himself that the first sentence out of Chakotay's mouth would include the hated word yet again.   He checked the mirror again.  Nothing showing but the carefully welded mask of emotional indifference he constructed for himself each morning before leaving his quarters.   He would not show them, any of them, how he was feeling. 

Three minutes to go before leaving for the bridge.  He used the time to pull out the medical tricorder he now kept in a compartment in his quarters (never know when or where you might be summoned for duty) and run it over himself.   No nutritional deficiencies, energy balance adequate, so his performance on duty wouldn't suffer from skipping a meal.  There was that other imbalance of course, slight but unmistakable.  He knew what it meant, but he was damned if he was going to report it to that monster of sarcasm in sickbay.  He had to work through this himself - the last thing he needed was a notation for depression going in his file.  Hadn't worked too well for B'Elanna, either, and he didn't intend to be found out as easily as she had been.

The turbolift doors swished aside revealing the familiar sight of the bridge on downtime, just about to gear itself up for the activity of shift change.  He stepped out, down past the command platform towards his place at the Conn.  There was a time when the person sitting there would have moved aside for him instantly.  He was noticed, but the ensign there chose to finish what he was doing before acknowledging him.  He waited, his face as expressionless as he could make it.

"Good morning, Ensign Paris,"  Chakotay's voice sounded from over his right shoulder.  There, he'd won the bet again.  Looking over to the command platform, he acknowledged the Commander with the regulation standard respectful nod.  "Commander,"    He turned back to the ensign, not prepared to let the young upstart delay him so it looked like he'd been late coming on duty.  "Relieving you, 0 seven fifty nine, thirty seconds, Ensign."     If the command structure on this ship wanted protocol from him, they'd damn well get it.

It had become a battle.  He just wasn't sure what for. 

This was normally Harry Kim's shift, but he wasn't at ops.   He usually arrived well before shift start.  Once Paris was settled at the Conn, had performed the usual system checks and noted the rather sloppy state his predecessor had left the Conn logs in, he glanced up to see if  Harry was back, but his relief was still standing there.  Shrugging to himself he turned back to his own console.  Now that he'd had a chance to glance around and feel the atmosphere on the bridge, he could tell there was something going on, but couldn't tell what it was.  Was a time when he knew everything that went on in and around the bridge, was part of the informal network that kept the command crew in synch with each other.  Since his demotion, the rumour mill seemed to be passing him by, people were awkward talking to him, they didn't want to meet his eyes.  He got the impression they were ashamed of being in the same room with him, breathing the same air.  

 

Shortly thereafter, Kim and Captain Janeway emerged together from the Captains ready room, both wearing a couple of beaming, proud smiles.   Kim went immediately to his post and Janeway stepped down to the command platform but didn't sit.  Instead, she said in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the bridge crew present,

"I have an announcement to make."

Sudden misgiving seized Paris and his gaze darted over to Kim, and settled - on his neck, where the incongruous sight of one silver and one black pip stared mockingly back at him.

He didn't have to hear the announcement. Something ripped another part of Paris' soul away, but he was sure he had made no sign; hadn't even twitched.    Congratulations passed round the bridge, from station to station.  When it was his turn, he summoned a smile that was almost completely convincing, although it probably hadn't quite reached his eyes, and congratulated the new Lieutenant in a voice which stayed steady and even.

"Congratulations, Harry.  You deserve it."

He noticed peripherally that most of the bridge crew had had the decency to avert their eyes so they didn't have to look at the fallen hero making a fool of himself.  Harry was obviously somewhere up on cloud nine, shining with happiness, and Paris didn't want to spoil his best friend's mood, but he couldn't help noticing Kim's gaze slide downwards for just a second, and he felt as if the single pip at his throat was burning like acid, luminous in its obviousness.

It was shaping up to be a hell of a bad day.

The fire ate at him all through the shift, requiring all his concentration to hide it and behave like the professional officer he was meant to be.  He repeated the mantra in his mind, over and over again.  It helped a little, but by the time he was relieved he felt like he'd just worked thirty hours straight.  He felt exhausted by the effort and knew that he needed a few minutes to himself, just to cram all those feelings into a box and weld it shut so he could get through the rest of the day.  But release was not to be had just yet - on the way off the bridge, Janeway impaled him with her gimlet stare and sent him down to engineering on an errand.

He'd been trying to avoid B'Elanna for the last few days, and of course she'd be full of the news of Harry Kim's promotion, which he really didn't want to be reminded of.  He had tried so hard during his Bridge shift to feel pleased for his friend, but thinking of the younger man as superior to him in rank, when it had always been the other way around, when he had always been the older and wiser one, the big brother figure; it required a realignment of thought he simply didn't have the mental resources to make.  Add to that the disturbing feeling that his demotion had somehow succeeded in rekindling the waning interest that B'Elanna had had in their relationship, causing her to pursue him more vigorously than she had in months, and he knew that it would be an awkward meeting.    Depression, unfortunately, could have certain side effects;  he knew it had for him, and he didn't want to have to admit to her that he wasn't capable of being with her at the moment.

But refusing the Captain's order was unthinkable.  B'Elanna had been caught out because she had allowed herself to act out of character and she hadn't been in the Captain's blackest possible book at the time.  So he slouched himself down to Engineering, trying out every excuse he could think of in the turbo lift on the way.  They all rang hollow and unconvincing.

He arrived in Engineering at the tail end of a conversation between B'Elanna and two of her assistants, her second in command, Lt Carey, and Susan Nicoletti, both of whom looked a little embarrassed to see him arrive.  He guessed immediately that the topic of conversation had been Harry Kim, and, peripherally, himself.  They did have the goodness to dry up as soon as they saw him and any comments about Harry's promotion went unspoken.  He was grateful for that, it allowed him to come straight to the point and, all business, hand the Chief Engineer and his erstwhile lover the padd containing the Captain's data.  For a few moments he entertained the hope that she might leave it at that and let him beat a quick retreat, but having given the padd a quick scan, she asked the question he had been dreading.

"You okay for this evening then?"   Her sly, darting glance at him confirmed his worst fears;  she was in Klingon mood and that meant sweat.  All his well rehearsed excuses went out the window and he stared at her, gaping like a stranded fish while his mind tried to come up with something coherent.  The honest answer, 'No, B'Elanna, I don't want to get anywhere near you because it just reminds me that I'm impotent,' refused, quite reasonably, he thought, to form on his lips.    Perhaps she had interpreted his floundering as playful, in any case, she evidently decided to respond in the same manner,

"Of course, I could just make it an order."

Paris' soak-up-punishment meter reached critical mass.   He hadn't minded it much the first time she had pulled that one, or the second, but now he realised he minded it very much indeed. 

"An order?"  he echoed, trying to push down the core control rods in his brain.

"Be in my quarters at 8.00 tonight.  That's an order."  Her expression was playful, but he also detected a little bit of triumph in it, of superiority.  Paris saw at least two smirks.  Something inside him snapped.

"Pulling rank for the purposes of gaining personal favours is harassment, Lieutenant," he snapped back at her, with the emphasis unconsciously on the last word, and gaining a savage satisfaction at the way her jaw dropped,  "I won't be there.  If you persist in trying to make me, I'll consider our relationship at an end."

He walked out of Engineering, steaming, not looking back to see the astonished expressions on the three faces still turned towards him, watching him go.  So much for keeping his head down and not attracting attention.  Hell, he couldn't even get that right.

 

He prayed she wouldn't come running after him, and then some other part of him prayed she would, which at least would show she cared enough to want to know what had gotten into him, but the corridor behind him remained stubbornly empty, and as he strode along  towards the turbo lift, his anger grew.  It had seemed to him for some time now that she might have just been using him for sex; she'd already admitted that the news over the Maquis' deaths back home had affected her feelings for him, and he'd been giving her time, hoping she would get over it.    But now he realised he'd had enough.  He was tired, bone deep tired of being treated as some kind of comic relief.  All of them, smirking behind his back and sometimes to his face, ignoring his opinions except as an opportunity for condescension; he was sick of it.  Sick of them.  Maybe he couldn't get away from them, but he could sure as hell wipe the smug smiles off their faces. 

He reached the turbo lift, went to his quarters to check on the exact Starfleet regulation involving harassement,  and then, still steaming, headed for Chakotay's office.   The commander, having left the bridge just after Paris, was in his office, finishing off the normal daily administrative routine which went with being second in command on a Starship.  He looked up as Paris entered, and looked faintly surprised, either by Paris' expression or by the very fact of his presence when it was no secret that Paris didn't exactly socialise with him.

"Mr Paris.  What can I do for you?"   Well, at least, he hadn't used That word, but he would in a minute, when he heard this.  Paris came to stand in front of the desk, adopting standard Starfleet subordinate at attention pose number two, as he thought of it.

"Sir.  As per Starfleet regulations, section four, paragraph one hundred twenty three, subsection D, I wish to make a complaint of harassment against Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres."

Well, that got him.   You could have stuffed a whole pie down the gap in Chakotay's open mouth. The commander sat staring at him in shock, mingled with disbelief, and finally got his brain processing well enough to find the absurdity in the situation.  He started to chuckle.

"Getting a little too frisky for you, is she, Ensign?"

The use of The Word only served to strengthen Paris' determination to go through with this. "Sir, you misunderstand me."  He nailed Chakotay's gaze with a very direct one of his own.  "I am making a formal complaint.  Under the article I just quoted, you do not have the right to dismiss it."

Chakotay finally seemed to get the message that he was dead serious and his jaw dropped, if possible, even further.  "You want me to institute formal disciplinary proceedings?  On what basis?"

"Using the threat of rank to obtain sexual favours from a subordinate."

"And you've never made a similar joking comment to her?"

"No sir, I never have."  Which was true.  Sure, he'd pulled rank before, but never about sex. 

It was remarkable, Paris thought, how quickly Chakotay had sobered up.  He felt a sense of victory.  Using Starfleet regulations sure was the way to get people's antennae a-twitching around here.  He could see the commander was searching carefully for his next words.

"Tom,"   (ahh, the big guns.  Trying to appeal person to person.  Trying to reach the friend that had once been there, the friend that Paris had felt dying of starvation for the last month or so.  He did not feel inclined to respond).  "What is this really all about?"

"Are you refusing my request, Commander?"  Paris was not going to be diverted into a discussion of his personal feelings.  He had no intention of discussing them with Chakotay, or Janeway, or Tuvok, or even Harry Kim.   Ever again.

"No, not if you really want to pursue it.  As you pointed out, I don't have the option to refuse."

Paris nodded.  "I have witnesses to several incidents.  However since most of them are personal friends of the Lieutenant, and I am within my rights, I will be requesting an AR analysis on any testimony required from them."

"Paris -"  Chakotay's face now just looked pained and awkward,   "this has gone too far.  You're obviously angry at something that's happened between you.  Please, just consider this for twenty four hours.  Then, if you want to proceed, I'll set the wheels in motion."

It was reasonable.  Paris nodded, and left the office with the feeling that at least he'd scored a small point, petty and vindictive as it might be.   And the compromise did give him the opportunity to bow out rather than antagonise B'Elanna or anyone else further (although if B'Elanna lost her cool and went for him, he decided he'd take immense pleasure in nailing her for assault, as well).   Let them stew over it for a few hours.  Let them realise that there was only so much shit that he was prepared to take, and beyond that point, the law was actually on his side.  If the law meant any damn thing on this ship, 55,000 light years away from home.   

 

Checking the time, he realised he was now overdue for his shift in sickbay and the old familiar sick feeling came over him again; the same feeling he could remember having as a child when he woke in the morning and remembered he'd forgotten to do his study the night before and would have no excuse for not turning it in.  Being with the doctor often felt like being back at school.  When the doctor was in the mood, he would keep up a barrage of anatomical or pharmacological or equipment related questions, grilling him over and over, making him feel as useless and stupid as his father ever had.  Like his father, the doctor never seemed satisfied with the answers, or the speed with which he delivered them.  There was always something wrong. 

His duties in Sickbay had become a kind of martyrdom.  Since starting as medical assistant eighteen months ago, his three shifts a week had been increased to eight, which made him one of the most heavily rostered people on board ship.  As a Lieutenant, he'd been prepared to absorb the work without any particular feelings of resentment.  As an Ensign, the workload just seemed vindictive.

He paused at the door to sickbay and leaned against the wall for a few moments with his eyes closed, gathering strength to face whatever sarcasm awaited him inside.  A couple of crew members passed him by but he ignored them and they left him alone.  Having told himself firmly that it was only a few hours and then he'd be free to go back to his quarters, he drew himself up and passed through the doors.

The holographic doctor's eyes sparkled with his usual demon anticipation as he marked the arrival of his assistant;  "Ah, Ensign.  Gracing us with your presence at last."   Paris thought that if there was anything that testified to the computer program's sentience, it was his daily demonstrations of the darker side of human nature.  He could be as much of a bully as any organic being.     

"Sorry I'm late."  He knew he didn't sound particularly sincere, but protocol demanded he say it.  He didn't bother to offer an excuse.

"Let's get down to business, we've got a lot of work to do today,"  the Doctor told him with a happy ring to his voice, "First, I want you to recalibrate all three of the biobed sensors again, then we'll go over the planned timetable for the crew physicals, and then we'll see how much you remember about the homeostatic effects of deep lacerating wounds and blunt force traumas."

With a deep sigh and a legion of butterflies having hysterics in his stomach, Paris took up his tools and got to work on the first biobed, trying to concentrate on the work in hand and push the thought of the coming interrogation to one side.  As usual, the doctor had picked a subject  which would reduce him to a quivering jelly in two minutes flat.  At least there were no patients in here today;  his last grilling on the causes and cures of kidney dysfunction had been conducted in front of three sniggering crewpersons and had humiliated him within an inch of his life.

 

He dragged out the recalibration and in consequence they were only halfway through the crew rostering when the end of his shift approached.  He had been feeling a growing sense of relief as he realised that although the doctor might make him stay to finish the planning, he had escaped the dreaded grilling for the day.  He made a promise to himself to spend at least a couple of hours swotting in his quarters before going to bed, so that at least he had a fighting chance tomorrow.  The doctor wouldn't let him get away two days in a row.

Just as the time for shift change approached, his comm badge squeaked and announced, "Chakotay to Ensign Paris."   He made a face but didn't allow the disgust he felt to show in his voice;  there had been no need to include his rank designation in the call sign - it was just another example of the man rubbing it in.

"Paris here,"  he responded, pointedly not using the designation.

"Report to the Captain's ready room immediately, Ensign."

Paris suppressed a sigh.   "On my way."  He looked over at the Doctor, "Sorry, Doc, guess you're gonna have to finish this by yourself."

"You weren't being a great deal of help anyway,"  his kindly and benevolent supervisor told him.  "I shall await your attendance tomorrow with as much anticipation as I awaited it today."

Paris slid out of his seat and stood up.  "You know, Doc, if you despise me so much, why am I your assistant in the first place?"

"Unfortunately, we all have our crosses to bear, Mr Paris.  Fate seems to have decreed that you are mine."

 

Paris paused at the door on the way out.  He knew he'd never have a better time to say this, to get it off his chest at last, and he needed to say it.

"If you treated your patients the way you treat me, you wouldn't be fit to be a doctor," he saw the Doctor's head come up, the dark eyes focus on him in surprise, and he hurried on before either the Doctor could stop him or he lost his nerve, "Doesn't kicking someone when they're down violate the Hippocratic Oath or something?  You've been glowing with pleasure over this whole demotion thing.  When you came to see me in the brig, you gloated at me.  You were cruel.  And I lost my trust in you.  I don't suppose that means much to you, but it meant a hell of a lot to me."

He made his escape through the open doors before the Doctor could respond, leaving in his memory the impression of the third or fourth astounded face he had seen today.

 

After that, the last person he wanted to see was the Captain.  He knew for certain what it was about;  Chakotay would have blabbed to her about his complaint and she would be in 'Demon Mother'  mode;  concerned for her Chief Engineer, and determined to protect her still-in-favour chick from the one she'd already tossed out of the nest.

 

He entered her ready room and came to attention before the desk, feeling her eyes rake him appraisingly, searching, maybe, for something she could criticise.  But he'd made damn sure he looked presentable before entering and knew she wouldn't find anything to complain about.  He kept his expression carefully neutral, which in itself seemed to displease her.

"Ensign,  sit down."  she told him. 

'Oh no,'  he thought.  'You're not getting me off my guard that way.'    "With respect, Captain, if this is official business, I would prefer to stand."

The Captain's face registered surprise, fleetingly, before covering up with something harder and less pleasant.

"Very well,"   even her voice had hardened, and it gave him gooseflesh; "In that case, you can begin by explaining what you mean by initiating this complaint against Lieutenant Torres."

"I would have thought that was obvious, Captain.  The wording of my complaint was clear and specific," he kept his voice even and quiet enough to carry to the other side of the desk, but no further.

"That's not what I mean, and you know it."

"No, Sir.  I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

He used the word 'sir' deliberately, but without any inflexion, knowing that she disliked it but not giving her any reason to believe he was setting out to be provocative.    'Dumb insolence' was a devastating weapon if used correctly, and with enough subtlety.  The trick, of course, was to make damn sure there was no insolence;  and you had to be careful to get the 'dumb' part just right too.  Tom Paris had perfected the technique on his father as a teenager and become an absolute master of it after his conviction for treason but this was the first time he had turned it in all its blank perfection on the Captain - the woman he had once admired more than any other living being in the galaxy.  He could see at once that she didn't know quite how to react.  He could see the indecision on her face; should she call him on it when she wasn't sure there was actually anything to challenge?  It was a close thing, and he'd been ready to counter with a mask of reasonable, uncomprehending innocence, but  after a few seconds silent debate with herself she decided not to push it. 

"You're effectively asking me to put a notation in her file that might end her career," Janeway persisted, opting for a 'let’s be reasonable about this' approach.

"What I did was much more serious, and it hasn't ended mine.  Has it?"   He finally found the courage to look her straight in the eyes and ask the question he had been asking himself ever since the moment she had taken away his rank.   Did she ever intend to allow him to regain his status?  How long and how hard would he have to strive to gain what he'd already had, before the second biggest mistake of his life.  Or was this all he would ever have, because if it was, he wasn't sure he had the strength to bear it.

She met his eyes evenly, but didn't give anything away.  He knew then that she was still steaming mad at him and probably didn't trust herself enough to give him an answer.  Which in itself was a kind of answer.

But now that he'd had the chance to cool down a little over B'Elanna's behaviour that morning, he knew he didn't really want to see her subjected to a disciplinary hearing, and he was glad to take the opportunity to get out of it.  He dropped his gaze to the floor as if in capitulation and adjusted his voice to allow a suggestion of conciliation.

"I don't expect her to make inappropriate comments again.  If she does, I'll pursue it."

"I'll see that's made clear to her.  Dismissed, Ensign."

Paris experienced a sudden feeling of hatred so strong it shook his bones.  Hatred of her,  hatred of himself, hatred of life, they all rolled up into one, indistinguishable.   He didn't let it reach his eyes, and walked out of her room with his head up and spine straight.   Just as he had walked from this room on the way to the brig all those weeks ago.

 

How very different his experience must have been from that of Harry Kim's this morning, when he was called into this room.  Sure, Harry, you're in her favour now, and life is sweet.  But don't step too far out of line, because mama bear can be a vicious bitch if you cross her.   But then, of course, if Harry Kim had done what he had done, he wouldn't have had the same punishment meted out to him.  Just as Tuvok and Chakotay and Seven; all of them, had gotten away with things over the years.   But him?  Five years of the best service he could give her.  Five years of personal loyalty and professional effort, tossed out of an airlock because he had come to believe in something other than her.  And that, of course, was his unpardonable sin.

 

He ignored the open stares of the present bridge shift as he marched through on the way to the turbo lift.  Tuvok was there, and the Vulcan's dark eyes assessed him as he passed.  No sign of the occasional warmth that could flare up in that alien gaze, of the mutually accepting sense of companionship that they had gradually developed over the years.  Paris felt nothing for Tuvok now except as another immoveable statue on the bridge, beaming condescension and condemnation at him.  Paris might sit here still, and work his console and steer the ship, but the team no longer reached out to include him.  They locked him away from them, knowing that he wasn't really one of them, that they'd made a mistake about him.  Trouble was, he needed them so much more now than the day he'd come aboard from a federation prison, his skin still thick and impervious from twelve months of prison life and the events that had led up to it.

Thomas Eugene Paris.  Poor, naive creature, when he'd thought the earlier events of his life were as low as he could get.  Now he knew he would have had a lot longer to fall then before he hit bottom.  He knew because he was falling still, and bottom was nowhere in sight.  And the wolves were gathering to rip out his throat. 

Time to go back to his den and lick his wounds.

 

Back in the silent sanctuary of his room, he leaned against the closed door for a moment and allowed his eyes to shut, bathing his mind in darkness.  His ribs seemed reluctant to move to accommodate his breathing and he felt himself running out of air, sinking into something deceptively soft and gelatinous beneath his feet that would swallow him if he let it.

He put his hand over his face, feeling the sudden moisture intruding there again.  Great.  Another night when he sobbed himself into oblivion like a three year old.  

Shaking his head, angry with himself, he ordered,

"Computer, engage Full Isolation."

The computer chirped softly, acknowledging his command without words.  Computer systems that routinely monitored the lifesigns in every room on the ship were disengaged.  He had written this program a long time ago, for entirely different purposes.   Now even his door chime would not operate from the outside unless someone possessed a command override, and his comm badge would be shut down for all except emergency messages, yet again ordered only by command level personnel.   And none of them wanted to even acknowledge his existence right now.  

Part of his mind was shocked by what he was thinking.  Even at the worst, back in the Alpha Quadrant, he had never thought this before.  The pull of that temptation was made even easier by the increased opportunity.  He was medical assistant.  He had things in here that other crew members had no access to.  It would be absurdly easy.

The decision was touch and go for a moment, a second that felt like a whole lifetime, trembling inside him unmade.  The saner part of his mind won out and he reached again for the medical tricorder, running another check on his neurone imbalance.  It was just slightly worse than it had been this morning.  He sighed.  He needed medication, but the drug wasn't part of the standard kit.  He would have to get it from sickbay, which would leave a record.  He would have to remove the access log, render it untraceable.  He knew how to do it; there wasn't much about this ship he didn't know, but it would take time.  He'd have to wait until the doctor was out of the way, and his best chance of that was during the Doctor’s assigned holodeck time, some of which was due the following morning.

Maybe he would just benefit from an early night - if he could sleep after everything that had happened today.  Still, he had a remedy for that.  A sedative would let him get off and keep him from having bad dreams for a few hours at least.  Just a light one, he decided, picking his hypospray out of his medical kit and loading an appropriate drug.  Adding a buffer solution which would give him several minutes time delay, he pressed the instrument to his wrist and set it off; his medical training enabling him to accurately target the much smaller blood vessel there rather than the one in his neck, which would have acted faster even with the buffer.

He shed his clothing in untidy stages as he headed for the bed, just barely managing to crawl into his nightclothes and under the sheets before the drug hit him and he was out like a light.

 

 

Much, much later, in the middle of night shift, he was woken by the sound of his door chime and sat up, feeling fuzzy. 

"Lights, 20 percent," he ordered and winced as they came up, momentarily dazzling him even at such a low level. 

He knew whoever was at his door was not someone he could afford to ignore, otherwise the sound would not have intruded into the room.   There were only four people on the ship for whom the chime would have responded under his program, and he didn't want to talk to any of them.

He also knew that if he didn't open the door to them, they would attempt to override his door controls anyway, and when they found they couldn't, because he had locked the security routines out, they would assume something was wrong and come back with a security team and phasers, and burn their way in.   No way to avoid being pinpointed by the guys in charge on this ship.  If they wanted you, they would find you, no matter where you were.   There might also be awkward questions asked about just how he had circumvented ship's security so easily.  He slid out of bed, groped for his dressing gown and secured the tie around his waist as he walked towards the door, his legs feeling a little rubbery - after effects of the sedative which by his calculations should have only just worn off.   Just as well whoever it was hadn't turned up an hour earlier.

He thumbed the door control and blinked in surprise at the Doctor, standing outside wearing his mobile emitter and looking very awkward.

Tom ran a weary hand through his hair and sagged slightly against the door frame.   "Doc, it's the middle of my night shift."

"This couldn't wait."

He shrugged and gestured for the doctor to come in.   The doctor stepped across the threshold, looking around him with interest.  "It's....."

"Messy is the word you're looking for," Paris supplied, following the doctor back into the room after closing the door.  "Or catastrophic."   He sank down on the nearest chair, the one at his desk, and without prompting, the Doctor lowered himself into a chair opposite.  His intense appraisal made Paris feel nervous, and he suppressed the urge to fidget.  What on earth had possessed the doctor to make an appearance at this time of night?  Paris could think of no reason he would do so - although he admitted to himself that his thoughts were still a little on the slow side.  He hoped he wasn't about to be caught for self-medicating restricted drugs.  He was pretty sure it would mean another spell in the brig, which would no doubt delight the doctor but in his present frame of mind would probably break him.

"What do you want, Doc?"  he finally asked, trying to break the other's stare and wondering what he saw;  an unkempt shadow of his daytime self, shoulders and spine slumped and eyes crusted with sleep.  How very appealing a sight he must be!

"I owe you an apology."  the Doctor told him, his tone less sarcastic than Paris thought he had ever heard it.  He suddenly found himself imitating Chakotay's earlier expression of shock and purposefully closed his mouth to avoid looking like a stranded fish.  "You what?"

"I reviewed my actions when you were in the brig and concluded that you were quite right.  I am so used to bandying words with you that I didn't stop to take into account how you must be feeling.  I was angry with you and set out to make you feel as insignificant and worthless as possible.  Obviously I succeeded better than I realised.  In all the time that you have worked for me in Sickbay, I don't recall ever having said a positive word about your work to you.  When I was thinking about what you said I realised there wasn't anyone else on board ship that I would have treated with such cavalier disregard. Given all the other demands on your time and attention, you've become a more than competent assistant.  I thought it was past time you knew that."

Paris took a few seconds to absorb all this, it required an internal reset.  The doc, treating him like a human being, apologising to him; actually being nice to him?  There had to be some catch. But the doctor looked sincerely contrite.  They had been exchanging insults for nearly five years now, and in all that time, Paris had rarely felt the doctor had anything but contempt for him.  He fished for something to say that was non-committal but indicated he was receptive to an apology.  Apologies had been kind of thin on the ground lately, he wasn't so far gone as to not appreciate one.

"I guess it’s just habit, with you and me."

"Habit does not seem to be to be an adequate justification for cruelty.  I'm glad you told me how you were feeling, Ensign Paris.  Even the most sophisticated intellect occasionally needs to be made to stop and consider their actions in a new light.  I want you to believe that it was never my intention to kick you while you were down, as you put it."

"You're not the only one around here who has that talent, Doc.    And yes, you don't need to tell me I'm feeling sorry for myself.  And you don't need to tell me I should pull myself together, either.  I spend more than enough time telling myself that."

The doctor might have been many things, not all of them entirely pleasant, but his diagnostic skills were first rate.  Plainly, it had not taken long for his eyes and ears to sum up and conclude what Paris had already confirmed.

"Perhaps you can't stop feeling sorry for yourself.  Perhaps there's a reason for it.  Where's your tricorder?"  he cast around but was prevented from looking further afield by Paris' hand catching his arm and restraining him from getting up from the table.

"I've already run the tests.  I know what they mean.  I can't afford a notation in my file right now, Doc;  it would be seen as weak.  I'm in a ship full of wolves, if I show any weakness at all, they'll tear me to pieces."

"Is that really the way you feel?   Is it that bad?"

The other's compassion was too much.  He felt the tears crowding in, an inexorable tide that might overwhelm him completely if he gave into it.  He was afraid of letting go, not sure if he'd be able to bring himself under any sort of control again, and sat with his hand over his mouth and his eyes closed, fighting down the impulse, trying to bury it.

"Stop being nice to me, just for a minute.  I can't cope with it."

Then the black wave hit, and engulfed him.  All he could remember later about the next few minutes was a feeling of helpless abandon as the tears and the grief that had been lapping just beneath the surface flooded over him, leaving him helpless in its wake, and the Doctor's rather clumsy, ineffectual attempts to comfort him by patting his back as he cried into his crossed arms over the table top.

His fears were unfounded though, as control did eventually return, and with it a kind of empty peacefulness, a dull, blank, wrung out sensation, as if he simply had nothing left to feel.  He knew it wouldn't last, but like this, it was easier to talk about the things that had been tearing him inside out, and the Doctor's silent, concerned support - so different from his usual demeanour, was just what he needed to enable him to finally begin to put some of it into words.

"It all happened so fast.   It's been like a nightmare, one minute I was riding high and everything was going fine, and the next minute I was out of control and the feelings were so extreme.  I know defying the Captain was wrong.  I know what I did was out of line.  I really wasn't prepared for the viciousness of her response.  It frightened me, to tell you the truth, and it's still scaring me now.  I've - I've lost the ability to trust.  Any of them.   And if my problems end up getting broadcast all over the ship the way they did with B'Elanna, after everything that's happened recently, I just couldn't take that." 

The Doctor's voice was gentle, the way he used to speak to Kes.  Paris couldn't remember a time that that tone had been directed at him before, but he found himself responding to it with more feelings of trust than he'd experienced in weeks.  Suddenly, he didn't feel quite so completely isolated. 

"This is typical depressive behaviour.  I know there's no point telling you that all these extremes of feeling are a manifestation of your condition, and that they will fade.  But part of you, the analytical part, knows what I'm saying is true."   

Paris drew his sleeve over his face to wipe off the excess water and ungum his eyelashes.  "I know.   And I was going to do something about it.   I was going to do it myself.   Up until a few minutes ago, Doc, I wouldn't have come to you if I was bleeding to death.  I thought you were carrying out Janeway's instructions, to make my life a misery, to push me until I break and throw myself at her feet and publicly beg for mercy."

"Is that really what you believe she wants?"

"The way she looks at me now makes me shrivel up inside.  I can feel her malevolence beaming at me from clear across the room.  I don't think I've suffered enough for her, and I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much she's got to me."  He sniffled again, and then was taken by surprise by a bubble of laughter, "Listen to me.  Everything's personal.  The whole universe is conspiring to make my life a living hell.  How did I get to this state?"

"It's hardly surprising, given our current situation and the fact that we've been away from homes and families for nearly five years.  In fact, I predict that if we don't get home within the next few years, half of the crew will come down with some form of psycho-reactive disorder.  You've been placed under more stress than most, due to the level of your responsibilities.   And you're not the first."

"I know.  I am your assistant.  B'Elanna...."

"Was the last in a series of occurrences.  In the first three years out here, Kes and I successfully treated seven cases of severe depression."

"I didn't know."

"You had no reason to know, and nor does anyone else.  I'm prepared for your treatment to stay off the record, Ensign Paris, given that I've undoubtedly contributed to your illness, and as long as I consider that you remain fit for your duties.  But I administer, and I monitor.  Is that a deal?"

Since they seemed to be communicating all of a sudden, Paris decided to air the other little matter as well, "Do me a favour?"

"What?" the Doctor asked, obviously surprised by his companions sudden change of tone.

"Don't use - that word.  Not unless you have to."

The Doctor's face creased in a thoughtful frown, "It means that much to you?  I would never have considered you someone for whom status was all that important."

"I didn't think it would either, but it does.  You may not believe this, Doc, but I worked hard for those pips, even if it was after I got them.  I worked hard for the respect, for the reputation that I could do that job better than anyone else.  I got used to being the expert, the one everyone came to for an opinion on piloting.  For the first time in my life people were actually paying attention to what I had to say, and now - oh hell, I can't really tell whether it's me not talking to them or them not talking to me, but it sure feels like the latter."

The Doctor sighed, "I have wished on numerous occasions that we had a counsellor on board.  I'm a poor substitute.  Although I have access to all the medical literature ever published about psychoreactive disorders, I have never experienced such a condition myself." 

"You've never experienced being transformed into an hyper-evolved amphibian either, but you managed to treat that successfully.  I'll be okay, Doc.  I just need a friend right now," he shook his head in wonder,  "I never thought it might be you.  I wasn’t expecting anyone, I’ve annoyed just about everybody in the known universe this week."

The Doctor stood up, brisk and business-like again.  "Barring emergencies, the night shift between six and seven in the morning is always a quiet one.  I suggest you drop into sickbay before breakfast so we may begin your treatment."

Paris checked the time.  "I'm not going to get any more sleep tonight anyway, I might as well come along now, if you could use the company.  Give me a few minutes to dress and I’ll be there."

The Doctor nodded, and made to leave, then paused at the door as though a thought had only just occurred to him.  "Mr Paris, you might wish to consider that aside from myself, you are the only person on this ship with any reasonable level of medical knowledge.  I know you didn't want to become a field medic, and I know my training methods have been uncompromising..."

"Hateful, actually..."

"Be that as it may, you don't have to confine your expertise to piloting.  If you worked at it a little harder, you could become a very fine medic.  It would be helpful to me, since I've had no-one to rely on to back me up since Kes left.  That is, if you feel ready for some more advanced medical training? - assuming we could find a way to make it more palatable to you.   I'll push you hard.  You respond better the harder you're challenged, I have often observed that about you.  I'll expect a great deal from you, but I'll do it as a friend, as someone who wants you to succeed.  In a few years’ time, you could actually be a doctor.  If you want to try."

Tom Paris found a slow smile starting to creep over his face, at the same time as the first warm feeling he could remember for a long time stole through him.   "Yeah.  I guess I do."

He reached for the Doctor's outstretched hand, and the pact was sealed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is assumed that the events in the episode Dark Frontier occurred just before the start of this part, and that the events prior to that happened more or less with no major changes. Major divergence from canon begins with this part and continues from there as Voyager’s position in space-time will change significantly during the rest of the story.

**Part Two:**

_Some weeks later…_

 

 

Boredom could be as much of a problem as outright conflict.  Aside from the constant danger of becoming stale or sloppy, it gave one too much leisure for introspection, something Commander Chakotay knew he was prone to in any case.  Sometimes it seemed as though their entire journey so far had comprised of long periods of boredom punctuated regularly by a few hours or days of mad panic.  He often wondered what those interludes of panic felt like to crewmembers who were not in a key area of the ship, like the bridge or engineering.  He knew that Harry Kim, as Ops officer, was pretty good at disseminating information as appropriate, and of course, the rumour mill was alive and well on Voyager, disseminating information when it was not appropriate, and sometimes not even true;  nevertheless,  the ship must have been a pretty tedious place to live for many crew members, and even the best efforts of department heads couldn’t keep everyone motivated all of the time. 

Before long, Voyager would cross the theoretical mapping boundary between the Delta and Beta quadrants.  Although this was neither temporally or geographically the exact halfway point of their journey home, emotionally, it was halfway.  Thirty five thousand light years to go.  Thirty five thousand light years travelled in just under five years.  Better than they could reasonably have hoped for when they set out, believing it would take them seventy years to get home.  Through hostile territory of a dozen different species, through Borg space, for heaven's sake, and they were still remarkably in one piece.  Comparatively few had died.

There would be a celebration, once they crossed into the Beta quadrant.  Funny, then, how no one really felt much like celebrating at the moment.  There had been an air aboard ship for some weeks, a general lassitude that made him uncomfortable.   Tempted to ascribe it to the uneventful space they were travelling through, nevertheless Chakotay's instincts told him it was more than that.  It had something to do with the Captain, and that made him uneasy.   The weight of this command had been lying heavily on her for some time now; she had taken some decisions recently which had distanced her from quite a few of the crew, including some of the key officers she had come to rely on.  She needed his support more than ever, and although he hadn't agreed with all of those decisions, he would never have dreamed of withdrawing his loyalty.  While he had hopes of a captaincy (if they got home while he was still young enough, and if Starfleet formally accepted him back after his chequered career as a Maquis) - on this journey, he hoped he would never have to sit in that chair and make those decisions.

Chakotay had asked himself many times in the past if they would have got this far had he been in command over the last five years.  He would have liked to think so, but he knew the truth of it; the high-risk strategies that Captain Janeway had opted for - the ones which had paid off with sudden and spectacular leaps towards their destination - he wouldn't have taken those risks, had argued against them on more than one occasion.  He wouldn't have risked dealing with the Borg, wouldn't have taken on Seven of Nine.  He probably wouldn't have accepted the then unknown quantities of Kes and Neelix as members of the crew in the first place.  And he certainly wouldn't have made Tom Paris the Chief Conn Officer - and how many times had they all owed the ship and their lives to that decision?

Perhaps they were just getting older and starting to feel the pressure.  After all, the majority of them hadn't been off the ship more than once or twice in five years.  The senior staff were fortunate in that they got to go on away missions but junior staff; crewmen and ensigns, had been cooped up aboard, and despite the best efforts of certain members of the crew to provide new distractions and entertainments, the unvarying monotony could be grinding and debilitating.

As he walked the corridors of the upper decks on the way to the Captain's ready room for their normal morning meeting, he saw that monotony reflected in the pinched and pale faces of the crewmembers he passed.  The whole crew was showing signs of strain, more now than at any time previously on their journey.  If only Chakotay could pinpoint the cause of their increased vulnerability to stress, he might be able to find a way to deal with it. Until then, he was helpless to do anything except maintain business as usual.    

He arrived outside the ready room exactly on time, a veteran of five years worth of practice.  He paged the door and stepped through as soon as it opened, summoning a confident and, he hoped, cheerful expression.

"Good Morning, Captain.  Sleep well?....."  He stopped dead as he saw the expression on the Captain's face.

"You look like your dog just died," he observed.    She invited him with a gesture to sit and got up to get them both coffee.  She didn't say anything until she had handed him the drink and was sitting beside him, sipping her own.

"Tom Paris just requested a permanent re-assignment to Sickbay."

Chakotay sat back, wondering if he looked as surprised as he felt.  "He wants to give up the helm?"

"Helm, Command line, the Delta flyer.  Everything I thought he cared about," Janeway concentrated on her coffee for a few moments, frowning into the cup, letting the movements of the liquid soothe her thoughts.  She was plainly disturbed by the request, and he knew that Tom Paris was not her most comfortable topic of contemplation at the moment.  He wondered if she was feeling guilty.  Paris' punishment for his acting out had been harsh - savage, even, and he had not been the same person since.     

"I must confess I didn't see this one coming," he commented. 

"Neither did I," she responded, her voice slow and thoughtful. 

The rest of the daily business forgotten, they sat in silence for a few minutes, each re-living memories of the last few years.  For Chakotay, it was watching Tom Paris riding the ship through a displacement wave, exclaiming how much fun it was.  Watching his calm competence in battle, or fighting to get the wounded ship through an ion storm, or landing her, all 700,000 tons of her, light as a feather, on an unknown planet's rocky terrain.  He couldn't imagine seeing Paris swap his red uniform for the blue one of life sciences and never sit at the helm again.

"I can't believe this." Chakotay finally commented, "Flying is what he lives for," he looked over to where the Captain was sitting deep in thought.  "What are you going to do?"

She roused herself from the reverie she was in danger of falling into, "I haven't decided yet."  Her tone recovered its normal brisk momentum;   "I haven't felt that he's been pulling his weight on the bridge recently.  Maybe it is time for a change of Flight Controller."

Her avenue of thought disquieted him and he found himself feeling protective of the disgraced helmsman.  "He's done everything that's been asked of him, Kathryn.  I don't really know what more you can expect."

She shrugged somewhat dismissively, "He obeys orders.   He does his job."

Chakotay got the distinct feeling that he was in danger of losing the plot.  Surely persuading Paris to obey orders and do his job had been the whole point behind the demotion and the long term in the brig.  "Am I missing something here?"  He asked her, keeping his voice even; knowing that if she interpreted his question as sarcastic or challenging, she would lock him out of her thoughts and that would be the end of any useful input he could make that morning.

"You know a senior officer has to contribute more to the ship than just turning up on time for duty and following commands.  He needs to show some initiative, some drive."

"Under the circumstances, you can hardly blame him for being cautious.   I've noticed more than once people have made clear to him that he can't speak out the way he used to.  You've implied the same thing yourself.   If he's keeping his head down and his mouth shut, it's really no more than you can expect.   He's behaving like an ensign.  A subordinate, obedient, professional ensign."  Chakotay reflected with some silent amusement that it was really quite a turn up for the books for him to be defending Paris to the Captain.  When his comments brought no response, he changed tack and asked; "Have you spoken to the doctor about him yet?"

"No."

"Do you think the Doctor might be behind this request?  He's wanted a permanent assistant ever since Kes left."

"Why would he want Paris?"  The tone of her question was almost scornful, and Chakotay's disquiet turned to downright unease.  "He's always complaining about him.  Late for duty, doesn't address himself to his studies, flippant attitude with the patients."

"Actually, Captain, I haven't heard any of those issues from the Doctor in at least four months, maybe longer.  I'd be interested to know why he's been coming direct to you instead of through me."

"He hasn't."

"Then you're basing your assessment on reports I filed nearly a year ago."  Chakotay sighed, almost soundlessly.  "I guess mud sticks, particularly when it's on Paris."

She looked over at him, a frown on her face that was almost a scowl, "What's that supposed to mean?"  She said sharply.

"Just that you seem determined to think the worst of him."

"He betrayed my trust, and the trust of everybody on board this ship.  What am I supposed to think about that? You were the one who told me he would never be reliable." 

"Nearly five years ago!  He's proved his worth time and time again since then.  One incident isn't worth writing him off for."

"With his past history, it's not just a single incident.  It's a pattern.   How long do I have to wait for the next one?"

"Well I guess if you dump him out of the way on deck 5, you'll never find out.   That is the safest course of action, if you really have doubts.   Unless you'd prefer to just dump him out of the airlock instead."   He had hoped that his obvious witticism would provoke a response, perhaps encourage the Captain to ask herself if she was being entirely balanced.   She didn't seem to notice, was too preoccupied with her own private thoughts.  He wondered if there was anything he could do to reach her in this mood.

"You know he deleted all his Captain Proton programs?"  He asked her.

Janeway looked up, startled.  "No, I didn't."

"In fact, there isn't a single Paris - authored program in the holosuite menu except for his flight simulations.  He even removed Sandrine's.  It's like he's just decided to cut himself off from his past, reset his life and start over again - create a new identity."

Janeway's face registered annoyance.

"Sandrine's was more than just a personal program.  Half of the crew used it.  It was a meeting place, a place of relaxation.  He shouldn't have taken it upon himself to delete it."

Her hostility just wouldn't let up, and he went for a conciliatory response rather than argue with her further.  

"It hadn't been used all that much recently.  Anyway, I had Tuvok save them all before the backups were erased, just in case he changed his mind.  But I didn't confront him about it.  I felt it would only make the situation worse.  I don't know what it is, but something about him seems almost fragile at the moment."

She ignored that observation as if she either hadn't heard it or had deliberately screened it from her conscious thought.  "We've wasted too much time on this subject already this morning.  I'll think about it and give you my decision later.  Let's get on to other business before I lose my appetite for breakfast."

 

 

 

Tom Paris stared at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, noting with an almost professional detachment that his face looked thinner and pale, and wondering if he should check for anaemia.   The red top of his uniform reflected itself upward into his face.  He imagined whether he would look very different if the colour were blue instead, whether he would look more or less healthy.

He barely noticed the single silver pip on his collar. 

Paris didn't know exactly when, over the past few weeks, apprehension at the sight of sickbay had turned into enthusiasm, dread had turned to eagerness, and indifference had turned to interest.  The Doctor had made good on his promise to try and make learning a more engaging process.  He didn't throw padds full of data at Paris any more and expect him to memorise the contents.  Paris had never learned well that way; to him, learning was a process in which his entire body and mind had to be engaged.   Once the Doctor had started to understand that, everything had become practical, three dimensional, tactile.  Their relationship, once so combative, had changed, become something quieter and gentler.  Whether the Doctor was finally seeing him as a viable replacement for Kes, who had been well on the way to being a doctor by the time she left the ship, Paris didn't know, but he did know that the hologram was now most careful not to appear cruel or careless of his feelings. 

So now Paris found that he looked forward to the start of his daily shift in Sickbay, and didn't begrudge the extra time that the Doctor demanded to participate in training programs on the holodeck.  He had found that he was prepared to forego other, recreational holodeck activities in order to use his booked time, especially when the Doctor was prepared to use his allocated time as well.   And as knowledge started to accumulate, expertise growing in his hands and his senses as well as his intellect, his enjoyment of the process increased, along with his sense of fulfilment.  

It was hard work, especially as it had to be fitted in around his other duties on board.    If his feelings for his medical duties had improved, other feelings surrounding his present situation and relationships had not.  Although the medication was helping, battling depression was a slow, often painful process, even in the 24th century where so many medical solutions were virtually instantaneous.  He often felt adrift and out of control, his emotions fluctuated wildly and to extremes that were difficult to deal with.  He could not imagine what this time would have been like without one haven to escape to besides his own dark, quiet quarters.

He remained withdrawn from his old social circle, existing on the periphery, observing from a distance rather than participating.  And while more than one of his friends had been regarding him with worried expressions, none of them had approached him about his lack of enthusiasm for his normal pursuits.   Harry had tried to talk to him about it once, but had been taken aback when Paris had turned the same technique on him as he had on Janeway when she had called him for putting B'Elanna on report.  He hadn't tried it again.  As for B'Elanna, she had seen Paris' actions as a serious personal betrayal and now refused to talk to him at all outside of formal duty shifts. 

He'd been careful not to give any of the senior officers any cause to criticise him, maintaining formal Starfleet protocols in his interactions with them, acknowledging commands whilst at the Conn with crisp precision, not at all in the relaxed and easy manner to which he was accustomed.  Both Tuvok and Chakotay had tried, in their own ways, to ask if there was anything wrong, but he hadn't exchanged a single word with the Captain outside of his duties.    

It was odd, really.   The woman with whom he had a long-standing relationship had been refusing to talk to him outside of formal communications for weeks, and yet his feelings about that amounted to no more than a deep, dull ache.  It seemed completely overshadowed by the abrupt sick feeling that clenched his stomach whenever he thought about the Captain, thought about being in the same room with her, thought about having to talk with her.  The easy, subliminal communication that had linked them, sometimes almost telepathically, was gone, in its place a wall of silence and resentments.   He had, with that one act of disobedience, killed a part of himself he hadn't even realised existed until it was no longer there.  In its place was a gaping void, a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that threatened to swallow him whenever he thought about it.  Measured against that nothing else really mattered, and it felt like it was killing the rest of him, centimetre by relentless centimetre.  He hung on to his new found companionship with the doctor and his medical training like a lifeline.  It was like a light at the end of a far tunnel and as long as he kept focussing on it he could keep the captain out of his thoughts, but it was an uphill struggle and he could tell she hadn't forgiven him.  The way her eyes raked over him on the bridge made him nervous.  It made him very conscious of her status, her power, and his lack of it.

As far as he was concerned, although he loved to fly, particularly this ship, he couldn't get away from the bridge fast enough.  But he found that he couldn't predict anymore how she would react to his request for transfer.

 

 

 

"I've decided to deny Paris' reassignment request," Janeway told Chakotay as they left the bridge together that evening, "but since he's evidently so unhappy at the helm, it's time he was given the opportunity to sample some of the other duty positions on board.  That will give him a chance to make a more balanced assessment."

"Are you leaving the assignments up to my discretion, Captain, or do you have specific duties in mind?"  Chakotay asked, already knowing the answer and suspecting the worst.

"I have some suggestions."  Janeway handed him a padd, which he scanned briefly.  Not quite as bad as he'd feared; the postings didn't include toilet cleaner or warp plasma conduit maintenance detail, but none of them were positions which included either responsibility or authority.

"You took my comment about putting him out of the way seriously then," he observed, keeping pace with her as they left the turbo lift and headed towards their separate quarters, which were situated quite near to each other on deck three.

"Until I'm sure I can trust him again."

"And how long is that likely to be? Another five years?"

"I will give him only such responsibility as I think appropriate until I decide he's ready to take more.  If that's a month or a year or never, that's my prerogative."   Her voice sounded snappish and he knew he was pushing it to continue the subject, but this needed to be said.  Even if she wasn't ready to listen, at least it would be out in the open.

"May I speak frankly, Captain?"

"Of course, always, Chakotay," her voice modulated to the reasonable woman he was used to dealing with.  Plainly, her problem focussed only in the one direction.  He was glad it hadn't extended to include him, but it might, after he’d said what he needed to.

Chakotay was about to open his mouth to speak when a couple of crewmen walked past.  He paused to let them get out of earshot, and looked over to the Captain again, uncertain if he should be airing this in a public corridor.  Understanding his concern, and since they had reached the door to her quarters, Janeway motioned him inside.  Gratefully, he followed her in.

"This isn't just about him getting past this.  It's you as well," he told her once the door was closed.

"I beg your pardon?"  She was plainly taken aback; he recognised the warning signs, but ploughed on regardless. 

"Listen to what you just said - it's as if you're constantly looking for excuses to find fault with him.  If you want to know what I think, Captain.    I think you haven't stopped being mad at Paris for challenging your authority and making you give the order to shoot his ship down.  Simply punishing him and forgetting it wasn't enough.  You've been picking on him ever since and encouraging us to do the same."

Janeway scowled, "This is a ridiculous idea.  I don't treat Paris any differently from any other member of the crew."

"Yes you do.  Certainly differently than any of the rest of us who've stepped out of line."

"His infraction was worse."

"Was it?  Or was it just that it was more - personal.  Other members of the crew have disobeyed you before, but never quite like this.  Tuvok went behind your back, and disobeyed a direct order.  I stole a shuttle and hared off to get myself beaten into a pulp.  But Tom, he went against you, head to head, as the captain of his own ship."

"The captain of a stolen ship," she corrected, her voice cold and hard again.    He didn't let her interruption deflect him from his point.

"He didn't just defy you, he entered into a battle with you, and it was only your experience - and his lack of it - and the fact that Voyager is bigger and nastier than the Delta Flyer that made him lose.  He forced you to take a decision that could have killed him, knowing as you did so that if it did, you would never forgive yourself."

He could tell she was angry with him now, seething in fact, but could hardly back down now that the words were out.

"You make it sound like I'm behaving like a... a rejected lover!" she exclaimed. 

He was glad she'd said it rather than him, although he wouldn't have put it in quite so dramatic a fashion.  "In a way.  Paris has had a kind of crush on you from the moment he came aboard ship, and part of you has known that and taken advantage of it.  He's willingly done things for you that he wouldn't have done for anyone else.   Now you've discovered he's not your adoring puppy any more.  He listened to B'Elanna more than he listened to you.  I didn't notice you punishing her for egging him on to commit a terrorist offence."

"There was no reason to."

"She came to you and told you what she'd done."

"To protect him."

"She begged you to take her influence into consideration, and you refused."

"He's a grown man who should be able to filter influences."

"As long as they're yours?"

"You make us sound like two dogs fighting over the same bone.  He let me down and he's going to have to earn my trust all over again.  That's all there is to it.  Dismissed, Commander." 

Given the look in her eyes, which could have frozen nitrogen, he decided not to pursue the subject further and to leave as he had been invited to.  Plainly, the Captain was not ready to face her own feelings about what Paris had done, and she was probably the most stubborn person he had ever met.  He knew there was no point trying to persuade her.   "Well, the same two hundred and whatever bones, perhaps," he muttered to himself once he was out of her quarters.  

He was glad that Paris seemed to have found an advocate and defender in the Doctor, and wondered if he should actively support his request for full time re-assignment.  However, he knew that his first duty was to inform Paris of the Captain’s decision, a conversation he would rather not have had.

 

 

 

Rather than summon Paris to his office for something of this delicacy, Chakotay decided to talk to the ensign in his own quarters.

Paris' quarters were situated in the quietest part of Deck 4, which itself was the most sparsely inhabited of all the habitation decks.  He was still in the same guest quarters he'd been assigned when he first came aboard, a standard interior cabin when as a Lieutenant he had actually been entitled to one of the larger exterior windowed cabins, of which at least two were presently being inhabited by lower ranking officers.  In five years it had never occurred to Chakotay that Paris should have been moved to reflect his status, but he wasn't particularly surprised that Paris hadn't pushed the issue.  At first, his position on board had been precarious enough without making waves about accommodation standards, and by the time he'd become accepted his isolated little corner of the ship had probably felt like home.  Or maybe, he had requested a move in those early, uneasy days and been refused, and Chakotay had never heard about it.  As Chakotay approached Paris' cabin, however, he made a mental note to himself that if the former Lieutenant ever regained his rank, he'd make sure he was given the option to move.  

Reaching the cabin, he chimed the door and the response was almost immediate.  "It's open!"  Came the voice from inside and the door swished open.  Paris was sitting at his small circular desk, a large shallowly angled terminal in front of him displaying some intricate medical diagram.

Chakotay ventured further inside, realising that in five years, he couldn't actually remember ever stepping into Paris' quarters before.  It was neater than he would have expected - possibly a legacy from four years of Starfleet Academy.  Fleeters tended to be tidier than the Maquis crewmembers; that early training staying with them all of their lives.  But he wouldn't have expected it from Paris, who was often teased about his tendencies to leave things lying around.

The sight of the skeleton dangling from a frame by the table made him jump slightly.

"Who's your friend?"

Paris picked up one of the skeleton's wrists and waved its hand at him, "Meet Suzy.  23 year old Caucasian human female.  I haven't figured out what killed her yet but the doc says I should be able to just from the bones."

"It's real?"  Chakotay felt a faint twinge of alarm - respect for the dead was very deeply ingrained into his family's culture.

"No of course not.  Medical students stopped using real bones centuries ago."  Paris rose from his desk slowly, as if stiff and exhausted, and returned an empty mug to the replicator terminal.

Chakotay stepped further inside the room and noted in passing that the study terminal on the desk was displaying biochemistry which was way past his level of expertise.   "Doc keeping you busy then?"  He asked.

Paris obviously noticed his interest in the text.  "The effect of drugs on nerve conduction potentials.  We don't really need aneasthazine, this is an excellent soporific."

"It seems - very advanced - for a part time medical assistant."

Paris arched an eyebrow, indicating without saying so that he considered the observation somewhat impertinent.  "Was there something you wanted, commander?"  he asked, seating himself down on one end of his curved lounger.

Chakotay settled himself on the opposite end of Paris' couch, at the other man's gesture, and took a moment to find the right way to say it.  "The Captain has decided to vary your duty assignments."

"In what way?" 

This was going to be difficult and Paris wasn't giving him an erg of assistance.  "The Captain has decided that you would benefit from a break from bridge duty for a while."

Paris, when Chakotay had first known him, had covered up his feelings with a flippant, uncaring and rather brash facade.  Now, his expression, or rather lack of it, would have put a Vulcan to shame.  Chakotay found he couldn't begin to guess what was going on inside the other's mind right now, and it disturbed him more than he could ever have described.  He covered up by elaborating, "for the time being, your helm staff will report directly to me with regard to their bridge duties.  You'll be taking on a variety of temporary assignments, and you'll of course continue with your duties in Sickbay, but the Captain has decided not to reassign you there permanently.  I'm sure that's open to negotiation in the future."

Watching Paris' face carefully, and seeing the quick, subtle flicker of reaction, Chakotay knew that the younger man believed that statement as much as he did himself, namely, not at all.  Janeway didn't change her mind.

"You have the right to lodge an official request for a review," he reminded Paris.

"What good would that do?"  The younger man's voice was dull and expressionless.

"At least when we get back you'd know that Starfleet would examine all the evidence and decide whether or not you've been unfairly treated."

"I know Starfleet regulations as well as you do.  In fact, I probably know them better.  They don't mean anything out here."

"We will get home."

"Maybe.  But it'll be just the same.  She's the Captain, and everyone knows what I am.  Fairness doesn't enter into it.  She could order anything out here and they'd find a way to justify it."

"You can't honestly believe that."

"Don't you?"

"No, Tom, I don't.  The Captain may be tough at times but she's not a tyrant."

"She's a dictator.  She has absolute power.  Over all of us.   We have no control.  She can order this ship destroyed on a whim.  She could order any one of us stranded, or executed, or anything else that takes her fancy.  She doesn't have to justify herself to you, or Tuvok and as long as the security people are prepared to obey her orders, there isn't a damn thing you or anyone else on this ship could do about it.  That's the ugly truth, and you know it as well as I do.   We're dependent on her to stay rational, to keep honouring Starfleet regulations and Federation Law.  But what if she doesn't, Chakotay?  She's broken laws and regulations before, when it's suited her."

Chakotay took a few seconds to reply, uncomfortable with the entire topic and a little unsettled by the extent of Paris' negativity. "We've faced her down before."

Paris said nothing, but he shook his head, discounting the very few times the bridge crew had banded together to prevent their captain doing something suicidal.

"Paris, I agree with you that this isn't fair.  If you want me to invoke Starfleet Regulations and go in in your corner, I'll do it.  And both Tuvok and the Doctor will back me.  We can force her to back down."

Paris shook his head.  "It would only make things worse.  If she doesn't want me on the bridge anymore, better for everyone if I'm not there.   I'd prefer you not to assign me to engineering if that's possible."  

Chakotay nodded and got up to leave. 

"Will you be all right?"

The other smiled a pale reflection of his normal smile.  "Of course."

 

Chakotay looked back briefly at the door and saw Paris, now bunched up on his couch, his chin resting on one drawn up knee, his expression distant.  He made a lonely and forlorn figure.  A shiver passed involuntarily through the commander as the door slid closed, cutting off his view of the ensign.  For one horrible moment, he wondered if Paris would still be alive in the morning.  Then he shook that off.  Paris was tougher than that.  Chakotay had more faith in the young man than he evidently had in himself right now. 

He knew that he and Paris would never be close friends - there was too much history between them, but over the years he had come to respect and admire the younger man, and to realise that he had misunderstood him.  What he had originally perceived as arrogance was in fact a kind of noblesse oblige.  Tom Paris did not have a death wish or some unconscious compulsion to take unnecessary risks, but he had an innate belief that it was his place, his duty, to put himself in the line of fire to protect the people for whom he felt a sense of loyalty.  It was the automatic reaction of one who had been born into a family of captains and admirals and commodores; leaders all, rubbing 'shoulders' with the great and good of Starfleet when he was only tall enough to reach to their knees.  Chakotay'd been a commander long enough in Starfleet before he joined the Maquis to have become very familiar with the breed.

You could see it if you looked.  Paris was never in awe of powerful figures; would talk as naturally to a planetary president as to a chattering three-year-old or a shy young ensign in awe of him.  He had learned to walk tall and straight even when he didn't feel like it.  He had been born a prince in the only kind of hereditary royalty left on earth, raised in that tradition, absorbing Starfleet principles and its ethos along with his mother's milk.  Somewhere along the line this groomed and pedigreed aristocrat had slipped the chains and gone dashing off to run with the wolves.  But he had never managed to shake off the unconscious poise which that upbringing had given him, and people - people like Chakotay - had seen it as arrogance and used it as an excuse to think badly of him.

Having had access to files since he came on board Voyager that he hadn't had at the time the incident occurred, Chakotay knew now that his major bone of contention with Paris' time in the Maquis didn't even exist.  Paris hadn't abandoned them; he had led a Starfleet patrol ship away from the huddled band of fugitives waiting for rescue, knowing that in doing so he would be caught.  Noblesse obliges again.  And he hadn't ratted out the Maquis in return for a lighter sentence; he'd received the minimum eighteen months instead of the standard five years because of the intercession of his grandmother, another Admiral Paris.  The fact that the only Maquis base he'd known about had been attacked by the Cardassians and wiped out a month after Paris' capture had been pure coincidence.  Or more likely, with hindsight, been Seska’s doing. 

But while Chakotay had originally seen Paris' defensive attitude as terminal and deliberate intransigence, Janeway right from the beginning of their journey had seen it as spirit, spirit she could harness and use to their advantage.  Which made her attitude all the more worrying now, and made his dilemma all the worse.  He owed his first duty of obedience to Kathryn Janeway, but he also owed it to Paris, as a member of the crew under his direct command, to do what was right for him. 

 

 

 

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Harry Kim spotted B'Elanna Torres sitting at a table on the far side of the mess hall, prodding her food round her tray in an unenthusiastic manner.  He didn't blame her.  Neelix's unending search for culinary perfection coupled with his own spice tolerant taste buds frequently resulted in concoctions that the majority of the crew found alarming.   Today's attempt at hot oatmeal cereal would have made Oliver Twist feel right at home, but they were back on rationed replicator access again while they traversed this long empty stretch of space and after his previous evening's date with Jenny Delaney he had none left to rescue him from the horror.

"Can I join you?" he asked B'Elanna.   She looked up, her eyes distant, and realised who was standing beside her.

"Sure, Harry."  

He plunked down opposite her and applied his spoon to the off white gloop quivering menacingly on the plate in front of him.  His first mouthful convinced him that taking a second would not enhance his lifespan any.  He wondered if Tom had replicator rations to spare and if so, whether he could convince him to part with some. 

"Where is Paris, anyway?"  He asked B'Elanna.    The look she gave him was cold enough to start a small iceberg.

"How would I know?"

"Weren't we going to meet him for supper?"  He persisted.

"You were going to meet him.  I wasn't."

Harry sighed and dared another mouthful.   Repulsive as it was, it was better than antagonising the half-Klingon engineer any further.  Since she'd been hauled up in front of a very angry Janeway and warned that Paris would take official action if she pulled rank on him again for anything outside strictly normal ships business, she had refused to socialise with Paris at all.  It had been weeks now, and she still seemed incandescent with anger over the incident, which indicated to Kim the possibility that she might, just might, have a guilty conscience over her unguarded remarks.   That two of his best friends on board were refusing to communicate might have made life very awkward for him, but he barely saw Tom Paris other than when they were on duty on the bridge together.    He was worried about Tom, but he hadn't dared bring his concerns to the attention of the senior staff.  There was something forbidding in the Captain's attitude when it came to her former Lieutenant, and although the talk about the whole incident had died down long ago its effect on the crew had not dissipated.  The Captain was adored in some quarters and disliked in others, and virtually the same went for Paris.  The incident had polarised the majority of the crew into two camps and they were only just starting to forget their differences and work together properly again.   Those who felt loyalty to both, such as Kim himself, had found themselves in a very difficult position during the thirty days that Tom Paris had languished in the brig.  There had been mutterings, there had even been talk of mutiny in some quarters, which would have appalled Paris more than anyone, had he known.  Now that it was all over, something was missing from Kim's closest friend.  The sparkle of mischief, of barely suppressed devilry, had been as much a part of Paris as his presence at the conn.  That had gone completely, to be replaced by a slightly wary, veiled look, and in the rare moments when his guard came down, a contemplative sadness that twisted Kim's gut every time he glimpsed it.

Harry looked up from his despised meal in time to spot Chakotay entering the room.  He immediately noticed two things; one, that B'Elanna's head lifted and warmth sparked in her eyes as soon as she saw the Commander, and two, Chakotay looked more worried than normal.  He wondered if B'Elanna had abandoned all hope of getting back together with Tom and if she was trying to summon up the resolve to approach Chakotay instead.  He supposed that Chakotay's look of worry was nothing to do with this, in fact, Kim didn't even know if Chakotay had ever known that B'Elanna had once harboured a hopeless passion for him in secret.  He only knew himself because she had hinted as much in an unguarded moment.

"Sit with us, Commander?"  Kim invited as Chakotay passed by the table on his way to an empty one near the window.

"Be glad to," he actually looked like he meant it as he slid into the seat opposite Kim and regarded his plate with loathing.

"This can't taste as bad as it looks," he commented hopefully.

"It doesn't," Kim told him, and before the older man had the chance to look heartened, he added, "It tastes worse." 

Chakotay grimaced, most likely at the witticism rather than the food, and with a stoical sort of air, started to shovel gloop into his mouth.  "Seen much of Tom recently?" he asked between spoonfuls, his tone casual, but Kim suspected it was forced.   He matched it with his own.

"Not really.  He's been busy with his studies in sickbay most of the time."

B'Elanna pushed up from the table and left the room, without another word. 

"How are things with B'Elanna?"  Chakotay asked, although it didn't take a genius to make a damn good guess.

"Still not talking."

"Still?  It's been weeks!"

"Tom hasn't been talking all that much to anyone lately, except the Doc.  I know he spends a lot of time with him these days."

After a few moments silence, Kim decided to push the subject that little bit further.

"Commander, are you as worried about him as I am?"

Chakotay put down his spoon and sighed.  "Yes."

"Tom hasn't been Tom since..."

"I know."

"And the Captain..."

"I had noticed."

"We've got to do something about this."

"I'm fielding suggestions."

They ate in silence for a few moments.

"Tom has never displayed any obvious resentment," Chakotay finally commented.  "He seemed to accept his demotion as a consequence of his actions."

"Tom doesn't resent.  He just - retreats.  Into that shell of his, and finds something to occupy his mind."

"Like advanced Biochemistry texts?"

"How advanced?"

"I don't know.  Way beyond me.  Medical school level, I would guess."

"Last time I dropped by his quarters, he had a holographic camera on his desk displaying what looked like a heart.  And there were surgical diagrams on his monitor."

"You've met Suzy, then?"

Harry grinned, "He keeps it in the corner by the door when he's not using it.  Gave me a hell of a turn first time I saw it."

"I'm intrigued, Harry.  What is he up to?"

"If you want my guess, he's making up for lost time.  When he and Tuvok and Sam Wildman went down on the Delta Flyer a few months back, it scared the hell out of him that he couldn't do anything for her.  He told me afterwards that a field medic ought to be able to handle a punctured kidney with the right equipment.  Maybe the Doctor had a go at him and got him to study a bit more."

"The Doctor and Tom have always been combative.  In the past, Tom's gone out of his way to avoid sickbay duty, but I have noticed recently that the Doctor has been almost - protective."  He pushed his plate aside, "I need to have a talk with him about Tom, and get to the bottom of this.  It's gone on too long."

Harry put out a hand to stop him from getting up, "Commander, I wouldn't.   I know Tom; he's trying to work something through.  It's really better to let him do it in his own time."

"I'm not sure you'd think that if you'd had the conversation I just did.  I just told him he was off Bridge duty.  I might have been quoting subspace field density tables for all the emotion he showed."

"What did you expect, tears, from Tom?  In front of you?  You know, Tom's much tougher than he looks or acts.  He survived that Akritirian prison with an infected knife wound much longer than I would have.  When he really makes up his mind about something he can't be shaken from it."

"Just like the Captain."

"Yeah.  He's pretty easy going, and people think he kind of drifts through life and never makes any effort.  But I wouldn't like to be his enemy.  He's got a core of Rhodinium I don't think most people even know about.  He's told me some things..."  Kim trailed off, not willing to betray a confidence, "well, he's much tougher than he looks." 

"What would you suggest?"

"Leave it a while.  It takes him time to think things through sometimes."

"Don't you think this whole thing has gone on long enough?" Chakotay challenged.  Kim couldn't actually have agreed more, but he also knew Tom Paris, probably better than anyone else on board ship.

"He wouldn't thank you for interfering.  Well, not that way.  Maybe you could talk to the Doctor tomorrow?  Not look like you've gone down there deliberately to confront him." 

Chakotay studied him with a disconcerting intensity before relenting.  "Alright, Ensign, I'll take your advice, for now.  I just hope neither of us regret it."

 

 

The doctor was busy examining some cell cultures in the lab behind his office as Paris wandered in.  He abandoned the microscope and entered the office where Paris had started reviewing patient logs.  That alone told the doctor something heavy was on his assistant's mind.  Tom did not particularly like routine clerical administration work, although he did it well enough when necessary.  For him to walk in here in the middle of the night and start doing some meant he must have been desperate for something to do to keep his mind occupied.

"Can't sleep?" asked the doctor.  "There are better ways to cure that." 

Paris ignored the question and came right to the point.

"She's done it," he told the doctor.  "She's taken me off the bridge."

"Permanently?"  The doctor asked.

"I don't know.  She hasn't granted my request, just banished me from the conn.  I was kind of expecting it, but..." he trailed off but his expression said it all.  "What do you suppose she'll do next?"  He asked, looking up, and in that unguarded moment the doctor saw real fear in his eyes.  Fear and bewilderment and helplessness.  The doctor's hand moved haltingly to his assistant's shoulder, where he attempted a reassuring pat.

"There's no reason to believe she'll do anything.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I think we should try to take a positive attitude," he told Paris.  "Being less occupied on the bridge will free your mind to concentrate more on your studies."

"It doesn't mean I'll have more time, Doc.  I'll probably end up cleaning the Bolian sanitary facilities or keeping the perishable stock inventories up to date."

"You could refuse."

"I don't have a choice.  Report to work or spend the next year in isolation, on bread and water.  She can do what she likes, can't she."

The Doctor saw that Paris believed Janeway was capable of any extreme.  And while there were people who were prepared to obey her orders, he was not himself all that confident that such extremes would be halted, and worried about the effect that another head to head with her would have on Tom.  He had experienced the sheer sweetness of having Paris as a willing student rather than a jumpy, wary-eyed subordinate who couldn't wait to get out every day.  He had enjoyed training his new assistant more than he had anticipated he would when he first suggested it.  Paris was so very different from Kes, who had been quietly determined; committed but not often demonstrative.  When Paris took pleasure in learning, his whole being lit up, he sparkled, delighted in his achievements.  The Doctor had found himself charmed by this new creature who blew into Sickbay every day with the energy of a tornado, bringing laughter and delight in his wake.  He had found himself becoming more and more protective, especially as he had noticed - couldn't fail to notice, really, that while Paris was more enthusiastic and more focussed while in sickbay, everywhere else, it was the exact opposite.  Sometimes, when he made his regular rounds of the ship and ended up on the bridge during Paris's shift, he became quite uncomfortable seeing him at the helm - quiet, no animation, no sparkle in his eyes at all.  Flying had once been more important to Paris than anything else in his life, he knew that.  Since the Monean incident it seemed that he showed up, did his job, but took no real pleasure in it.  The Doctor was not a dedicated psychiatric program, but he had acquired a firm grasp of the basics over the years.  He knew about associations, and guessed that some part of Tom Paris's mind now associated flying, not just with the disaster over Caldik Prime that had changed the course of his life, but now also with the Monean incident.  Hard not to conclude, under those circumstances, that maybe piloting was the root cause of all your problems rather than your greatest strength.  If the Doctor could help by assisting Tom to acquire another strength on which to hang some much-needed self-esteem, he was only too happy to try. 

"I think we can do better than patient statistics to keep you occupied.  If you can't sleep, you might as well spend the time productively."  The Doctor had explored the depths of the medical databases and found numerous training holosuite programs, which he had adapted to suit their present circumstances.    Buried in the less well known parts of Voyager's extensive and labyrinthine databases was contained the entire training curriculum resources of several alpha quadrant medical teaching establishments, including Starfleet Academy.   Although not an expert programmer, the Doctor had something of an advantage, being a hologram himself, and what he couldn't do himself he enlisted either Harry Kim or Tuvok to do for him.   He would probably have asked Paris, who was an accomplished holo programmer, but that kind of defeated the object of the exercise.  The result was that he had a vast database of simulations available and was adding more every day as he found or adapted them.

Paris sighed, but the theatricality of it indicated that he didn't really mind. "Another training program?  Hell, why not.  It's not as if I have to get up in the morning."

"How about some Bolian Obstetrics?"

Tom shuddered.  "I'd rather help an egg-bound Tyrannosaurus Rex than a Bolian with a breech."

"Vulcan Kidney reconstruction?"

"Too fiddly this time of night."

"I know, I've got just the thing.  I think we should do some more work on your triage skills."

"I'm going to regret this,"  the Doctor heard Paris mutter, as he followed him out of sickbay.

 

 

  

Chakotay kept his word to Kim, although he suffered a restless night, tossing and turning, besieged by doubts.  If he was doing the wrong thing and there was a tragedy he could have avoided, he would never forgive himself.  He would probably never forgive Kim either, for talking him out of trying to prevent it.

He couldn't forget the doubt that had seized him the previous evening on leaving Paris's quarters, and every time he woke during the night he checked with the computer on Paris's whereabouts.  It consistently reported Paris's location as holodeck two.  Eventually Chakotay decided there was no point trying to sleep any further and began his morning routine, albeit two and a half hours early.  He could have a leisurely breakfast for a change, and drop in on Paris before taking the bridge. 

As he approached the doors to the holodeck, they slid open to reveal a totally filthy Tom Paris standing on the other side.   He was liberally splattered with blood and dirt, covered in a settled cloud of dust so thick only his eyes showed through, and he looked absolutely shattered.  As he walked through the doors, the dirt and the blood disappeared, leaving a crumpled and sweat-soaked but otherwise unmarked uniform.  He leaned for a moment against the wall just outside, completely ignoring Chakotay - in fact, he looked too exhausted to even notice him.

The Doctor, wearing his mobile emitter, followed Paris out of the door, looking fresh as a daisy and outrageously self-satisfied.  Paris possessed just enough energy left to look up.

"You're a sadistic monster," he commented without any particular inflection, before walking off down the corridor, slowly as if every joint in his body ached.    The Doctor stood where he was for a moment, looking ebulliently pleased.  He noticed Chakotay a couple of seconds later and his broad smile faded very slightly. 

"Commander," he acknowledged.

"Doctor, you're in the holodeck early today," Chakotay noted, deciding not to let on that he knew they'd been there most of the night.  "Quiet shift in Sickbay?"

"Field medic training," the Doctor clarified, minimally.

"Pretty grubby field," Chakotay remarked mildly.

"Disasters are never clean or pretty, Commander," the Doctor retorted, a slightly tart note to his voice.  "Emergency medical personnel have to be able to function in less than optimal conditions."

"From the look of your assistant, I'd say wherever you were definitely qualified.  I assume you're just there to supervise?"

"To monitor, Commander.  My assistants will have to do without supervision out in the field.  I won't always be there to tell them what to do."

 

The two of them walked down the hallway together, keeping a rather awkward silence until they reached the turbo lift and were out of earshot of other hallway occupants.  Once the doors had closed, Chakotay asked;

"About Ensign Paris, Doctor.  Is he - working out for you at the moment?" 

"Whatever do you mean?"  The doctor scowled in a manner that Chakotay recognised as evasive.

"Well, he's never been exactly a willing assistant.  I was wondering if you'd encountered any attitude problems recently.  What his morale was like?"            

"His morale is about as good as anyone can expect for someone who is being worked to exhaustion on several different fronts."

"I beg your pardon?"  The Doctor's remark took him completely by surprise.  Was that a protective attitude hiding under his normal acerbity?  Maybe the Doctor had been behind the request for re-assignment after all.  Chakotay halted the turbolift midway between decks and stared hard at the doctor, willing him to elaborate.

The Doctor wasted no time hammering his point home.  "I was under the impression this was an ongoing part of his punishment."

"Tom isn't being punished, Doctor.  That was over and done with weeks ago." 

"Commander, you can't be that naïve.  A daily shift on the bridge - a daily shift here, additional work assignments on the Delta project, re-supply missions, engineering projects, training assignments.  The mathematics aren't difficult - in a four shift system, that leaves him less than six hours in any twenty four to eat, sleep, socialise - not that I've noticed him doing much of that recently - and he still finds time to review the training files I expect him to learn.  If that kind of regime isn't a punishment, what it is?"

"Everyone works long hours, Doctor.  It's necessary."

"Not under the kind of pressure the Captain's been putting on him.  It's as if she's come to enjoy watching him bow down under the weight of it all."

So, Chakotay reflected, he wasn't the only one who had noticed the Captain's attitude.  But he wasn't going to discuss the Captain's personal business with the Doctor until and unless it became necessary for the good of the ship.  In the meantime, he attempted to deflect the Doctor's attention back onto his own interactions with Tom.  "I wasn't the one who just kept him up all night crawling through wreckage looking for mutilated bodies."

"Oh, so you checked," the doctor caught that slip neatly, with a smug smile.  "That indicates a certain preoccupation with the subject, wouldn't you say?"

Chakotay silently kicked himself, and then decided he might as well get straight to the point.  "I want to know if you could use more of his time in Sickbay?"

The Doctor looked confused.  "I was given to understand that Mr Paris had been reassigned to other duties."

"The Captain made some - suggestions.  But I'm in charge of crew rostering; I don't have to follow them."  Seeing the other man's obvious confusion, he attempted to explain without making it sound as if he was acting underhandedly, which of course he was.   "I find myself in the unusual position of wanting to run interference for Tom, while continuing to protect the Captain's interests, and the overall welfare of the ship.  It seems to me that he would be better occupied in Sickbay than tending the hydroponics section or re-calibrating crew quarter amenities."

The Doctor looked sceptical and hopeful all at the same time.  Plainly, he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  "Well, If you don't mind risking the Captain's wrath, I could use the extra help.  I don't envy you having to tell her."

"I wasn't intending to."

"And when she finds out?"

Chakotay's face creased into a smile. "Then you may be socialising with me in the brig for a while, which will no doubt confirm Mr Paris's worst fears."

"And then?" persisted the Doctor, finding little of amusement in the situation.

"Well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it.  Meanwhile, I'll keep his assignments outside sickbay to the minimum so you can have him more or less permanently on call.  If he'll come.  This isn't official so you can't come running to me if he decides to take a vacation.  Computer, resume."

The turbolift slid smoothly on its way and a couple of seconds later opened onto Deck Two. 

 

The Doctor watched Chakotay leave.  He frowned.  Voyager's Commander deliberately choosing not to follow the Captain's orders, and asking him to go along with what was plainly going to be a deception.  Himself willing to do so to protect an assistant he had learned to appreciate and care about.  A young man still struggling back from a depression that shouldn't have been triggered in the first place, and the two women who should have had his best interests at heart continuing to make things worse with both their attitudes.  How had the situation got so far out of control, and what could they do about it?

 


	3. Chapter 3

# Part Three:

# Some days later…

 

Harry Kim finished running his start-of-duty console diagnostic and glanced up to check out the rest of the bridge.  All the usual faces were in place: Ayala keeping busy over on the other side of the top section, Chakotay newly settled into the command section, and Baytart bending slightly over the conn as he checked something out on one of the monitors.  It still felt odd not to see Paris's blonder head there, but as far as Kim knew, his friend hadn't even been up to the bridge in ten days now.  Come to think of it, Captain Janeway hadn't been that frequent a visitor either, she seemed to spend most of her time in her ready room, although he wasn't sure if even Chakotay knew what she was doing in there.  If Kim had been less respectful to her, even in thought, he might have called it skulking.

What a strange ten days it had been.  He wondered if Janeway had any inkling at all how much effort had gone into keeping her and Paris apart during that time and just how many of the people currently present on this shift were involved.    It didn't seem to be working - the Captain still seemed edgy and she still hadn't gotten around to calling either Culhane or Baytart by name - she addressed all her orders to 'helm', or 'Ensign', if she already had his attention.  But then she had always been like that.  With Paris, a course adjustment or a command had often been issued as, 'Do what you can, Tom,' or 'Get us out of here, Mr Paris.'    She was never so unspecific with anyone else, and no other pilot had ever merited the first name treatment.    Kim wondered if she was even aware of the dichotomy.  The bridge ticked along in its usual quietly efficient way whether either Janeway or Paris were there or not, but it did feel unnatural somehow, subdued. 

For over five years now, bridge duty had been something Kim had looked forward to, not just because it was the most prestigious place on the ship and one couldn't help but bask in the knowledge that one's place was there rather than five or six decks down, not just because it was constantly challenging and stimulating work, but because with Tom sitting relaxed and confident down at the front of the command platform, and the Captain relaxed and cheerful in her chair or roaming the bridge, her eyes alive with interest, it had been a fun place to work.   That fun had gone, and he was sure the Captain felt it just as clearly as he did.

Paris on the other hand - well, Paris was hard to read sometimes, but Kim got the impression he was a little more relaxed now that he was away from the atmosphere on the bridge.  Of course, it wasn't as if they had the same close relationship now that they had enjoyed in the first few years, he couldn't pretend that their abrupt switching in status hadn't changed things.  It was also hard to work out whether it was his consciousness of their relative status or Paris's which was most at fault for the cooling of their relationship. 

Kim also had a faint, sneaking suspicion, which crept up on him at unexpected moments, that maybe Janeway had only promoted him to punish Paris, to rub salt in the wound, as it were, over his own demotion.  Of course, the second he thought it he dismissed it again as childish, paranoid and unworthy.  Harry knew he'd earned that promotion, he knew he'd matured and grown in the five years he'd been out here, had more experiences than many Starfleet officers got in a lifetime of service.  Then again…  Kim had never seen the Captain so hurt over anything before - she hid it well but he could tell.  Of course, what Paris had done had been bad.  No one disputed that, least of all Tom himself, and he had taken a hard punishment without any indication that he thought he didn't deserve it.  It was really only after the whole incident had been over and more or less forgotten by the majority of the crew that the trouble had started.  Whatever connection the Captain and Paris had had before, they just couldn't get it back.  Then there had been the trouble with B'Elanna, and Paris had withdrawn further and further into himself, and further and further away from Harry Kim.  It was undeniable that the extra pip Harry now wore on his collar acted as a barrier between them, in a way that it hadn't when it had been on Tom's.  Tom was older, he'd been around, knocked about in life in a way that Harry hadn't, and Paris still felt like an older brother to him.  Tom had a natural, unconscious air of leadership that Kim knew he wouldn't acquire in a thousand years.  It simply wasn't right that Paris bore the junior rank.

Kim figured that the trouble stemmed mostly with himself and not with Tom, it only seemed like it came from Tom because he'd been so low recently, and Harry had connected the two things together.  Kim knew he was status oriented and Paris (apart from the first few days on board when he had been ultra-cautious and fallen back heavily on unspoken protocols to enable him to cope) had always interacted with his commanding officers as if they were people first, ranks second. Kim reflected that he himself had probably grown more status conscious over the five years they had been out here.  The more he matured, the more responsibility he took on himself, the more distance seemed to open up between himself and the enlisted crew.  He had always accepted that as natural - they told you about command distance at Academy, said it was a necessity, and you ignored it at your peril.

A section of his board winked and he silently cursed himself for his inattention.  Hadn't he been Ops Manager for long enough to know that wool gathering on the bridge was dangerous?  It was a long-range signal from the Delta Flyer, but the signal quality wasn't good, which immediately made him apprehensive.  Although the Flyer was investigating a system not directly on their flight path and was several hours away at high warp, subspace communications between the two ships should still have been almost perfect.

"Commander," he alerted Chakotay, who was engrossed in reading something on his command panel and hadn't noticed the signal (it seemed everyone was wool gathering this morning), "Long range signal from the Delta Flyer."

"On screen," Chakotay ordered, shifting his attention immediately away from what he had been doing, and looking suspiciously grateful for an opportunity to do so.  Maybe he hadn't been so engrossed after all, just bored.

Kim attempted to transfer the incoming signal to the main bridge viewscreen, but failed.  "It's garbled," he told Chakotay.  "I need a few moments to clean it up."

Chakotay nodded and took the opportunity to page the Captain.

"Captain to the bridge."

The Captain stepped out of her ready room almost before the summons had been finished, rapping out the command, "Report!" as soon as she had cleared the doors.  Obviously she hadn't been too engrossed either.  Kim waited a half second to give the tactical and conn stations a chance to jump in with their reports first, but when neither Ayala nor Baytart spoke, he continued before the delay got too long.

"Long range signal from the Delta Flyer, Captain." He told her.  Sometimes another down side of bridge duty was having to repeat yourself several times in a row to several different people.

"They seem to have run into trouble."  Chakotay offered.  Janeway disdained to sit, but paced the command section like a hungry lion.

"Mr Kim…"

"Still cleaning it up, just a few more seconds, Captain." 

Even after Harry's efforts, when the view of the stars cleared to make way, the picture was blurred and sparkly.  The interior of the delta flyer glowed red with emergency lights and part of the blurring was due to wisps of smoke.  Kim flinched as he saw the face which appeared on the main screen, grimy, blood streaked and dishevelled.  He had, of course known that Paris had been at the helm on this mission.  Chakotay hadn't thought the fact important enough to inform the Captain, and the sight of Paris' face obviously came as a less than welcome surprise to her.  It had been informally agreed by all of the participants in their little conspiracy that he wouldn't be involved in any between ship communications, and since Tuvok had been the mission commander and was one of the primary co-conspirators, something must have happened to him.

"Where is Commander Tuvok?" demanded Janeway, her voice sounding as cold as ice from where Kim stood, observing the exchange.

"Injured," Paris replied.  "I need to talk to the doctor."

Chakotay leaned over towards the control panel he shared with the Captain, and issued an emergency summons.

"Report, Ensign," the Captain's voice was forbidding but Paris didn't seem to notice.  His expression was worried, bordering on frantic, which was so unusual for Paris in an emergency that Kim guessed he was going nearly crazy with concern about the Vulcan, who was nowhere to be seen in the picture's background.

"We were taking a second pass around the gas giant when something knocked the stuffing out of us," Paris reported, his eyes not looking directly at the woman he was reporting to but roving constantly around the background, searching, presumably for the Doctor's arrival. 

"Something?"  Janeway's inflection indicated that she thought this a poor sort of report. 

Paris shook his head and attempted to elaborate.  "It wasn't a natural phenomena.  We didn’t pick it up on sensors.  Best guess is some kind of mine, cloaked.  Disrupted every system on the Flyer; propulsion, inertial dampers, gravity grid, life support, the whole works.  We went flying like a couple of squash balls, and we nearly got toasted in the giant's atmosphere.  I got life support back, but we haven't got much of anything else."

"Where is Commander Tuvok?"  Janeway repeated, a little slower this time, with a little more emphasis on each syllable, as if she were talking to a complete moron.

Paris didn't answer as just then the Doctor, wearing his mobile emitter, materialised on the upper deck of the bridge right behind the Captain's station.  Paris, seeing him arrive, wasted no time.

"Doc, Tuvok got a fragment of metal through his skull.  It nicked his middle cerebral artery, although the gross tissue damage isn't too bad, there's hemorrhage in the temporal lobe and ischemia in the paracortex."  

"You're sure of the diagnosis?"

"I'm pretty damn sure."

"Then you must perform an arterial shunt at once."

"I…"

"Don't think, don't worry, don't hesitate, just do it, Mr Paris." 

On screen, Paris closed his mouth, cut off what he was about to say, and nodded.

"We will be in transporter range in three hours, perhaps…" Kim interjected.

"…No!" the doctor cut in. "It has to be done now, even a minute can make a difference.  And Tom, use twice the normal Inaprovaline to protect against neurotoxic shock in the affected tissues."

On screen, Paris nodded, looking unbelievably tired.

"Keep him alive, Tom," Chakotay ordered.  "The doctor will be with you in three hours or less, if we can squeeze any more out of the engines."

Paris nodded again, visibly less awkward to be interacting with Chakotay than the captain.  "Keep an eye open for whatever it was knocked us off course.  It came out of nowhere.  We didn't even see it coming."

"Noted."  Janeway said, taking back control of the situation with a slight glare at Chakotay and the doctor for co-opting the conversation. She signalled over to the tactical station and Tuvok's relief, presently Ayala, restored the main bridge viewscreen to its normal display of stars.

"Helm, lay in an intercept course, maximum warp."

"Aye Captain," Pablo Baytart responded and got to work.  A few seconds later Voyager jumped into warp on her way to rescue her missing crewmembers. 

"Ensign Kim, beam them directly to sickbay as soon as we get into range," Janeway ordered, "Chakotay, see to the salvage of the Delta Flyer and start immediate repairs to her systems.  I'll be in my ready room.  Inform me when we're in range."

She left the bridge, accompanied, it seemed to Kim, by a small thundercloud sparking static electricity, and the tension on the bridge uncoiled just a little.  Kim let out a deep breath and glanced over at Chakotay to see that he was doing the same thing.  They exchanged looks that said 'busted' to each other.  Chakotay gave it nearly a minute and then stood up.

"Mr Kim, you have the bridge."

Kim nodded and left his station to take the main command platform.  He silently wished the departing figure of the First Officer good luck.

 

 

Chakotay didn't particularly wish to beard the lioness in her den, but knew from experience that a summons would come sooner or later, and he would gain a very slight advantage by pre-empting it.  Since he was about to admit that he'd known she was being kept in the dark, any advantage was worth having.  He paged her door and when he got no immediate reply, went in anyway, assuming that if she really hadn't wanted visitors she would have locked them out.

She was standing in front of her window, staring out at the warp field slipping past, and didn't bother to turn around at his entrance.  Her voice was even, and to someone who didn't know her well, might have almost sounded disinterested.  "You assigned Paris to the away team?  Without my permission?"

Chakotay made damn sure his voice stayed even and reasonable.  "Away team composition is normally my responsibility, why would I ask?  They needed a pilot, and Tom wasn't doing anything vital."  He refrained from adding that if she'd had her way, Tom Paris wouldn't have done anything vital, or even particularly useful, at any time in the last two weeks, but he held the argument in reserve, just in case the appropriate moment came up.  "We were lucky he was on board.  None of our other pilots can perform neurosurgery in their spare time."  He was attempting to keep the mood light, or more correctly, to lighten the mood which had not exactly been warm and fuzzy in the first place, but his efforts were obviously falling flat.  She dropped her pretence at insouciance and glared at him.

"You should have cleared it with me first."

He'd seen her like this before, and she'd always come to her senses.  A tendency towards obsessive behaviour was one of her weaknesses; the same was true of many high-ranking Starfleet officers since it took extreme persistence and determination to obtain the rank in the first place.  Chakotay knew that from personal experience, and he'd often felt grateful that he'd gotten out from under the system before it had made him into one.  It did mean, however, that she was hell on earth to get through to when she didn't want to be.

"I'm sorry.  I didn't realise you were operating different rules for him than for every other crew member,"  he responded.

"You can cut the sarcasm, Chakotay."

"Sarcasm?  No, Captain, I'm just wondering if you're even aware of what you're doing at the moment.  Taking our best pilot off the bridge and assigning him to work which any untrained conscript could do…"

"…Which you over-ruled behind my back.  I'm not a complete fool, Chakotay."

"I'm afraid you're behaving like one."

Her eyes sparked with anger.  "That's enough, Commander!  You're skating very close to insubordination, let alone conspiracy to deceive your commanding officer…"

"…It's not just me, People are worried about him.  He needed some time away, and Tuvok was happy to take him.  They work well together, in case you hadn't noticed."

"So, am I the only Senior Officer on the ship who didn't know about this little conspiracy of yours?"

"You're the only Senior Officer on the ship who doesn't seem willing or able to get past one moment of madness in five years.  We've all been there, Kathryn, even you."

"I'm responsible for the safety of this ship and its crew.  I don't send crew I don't trust out on long range missions.  I don't expect my senior officers to go behind my back and ignore my command decisions."

"That's because we expect your command decisions to make sense!"  He burst out, finally running out of temper.  "A few facts and figures for you, Captain.  Tom Paris works an average of eighteen hours a day.  He hasn't been eating enough to keep a sparrow alive and he hasn't taken any leisure holodeck time in two months.  This can't go on, something's going to break, and if it does because you're too stubborn to recognise what you are doing, then this entire crew is going to feel the loss.  And it will be too late then to say sorry!"

He got no response.  Chakotay shrugged to himself and left the room without waiting for permission. 

Why the hell was the Captain doing this?  Why was her reaction so extreme, her sense of disappointment and betrayal so acute that she simply couldn't let it go, as she had with all the other members of the crew who had disappointed her in the past.  Not for the first time, he wondered if there was more to this than a simple command or trust issue. 

It was pretty clear now that although Kathryn Janeway valued Chakotay as a friend and confidant, she was never going to think of him as anything more.  His hopes for a closer, more intimate relationship with her had died a long time ago.  It had been a year now since she had found out her fiancee Mark had married and she was free to pursue a new relationship.  She had said as much to him at the time, and he had assumed she meant that to indicate that she might be receptive to being approached, but he had wondered since if her thoughts had been focussed on someone else when she had said it.   More than once he had wondered if she carried a torch for her older friend, Tuvok; a relationship she would have known to be utterly hopeless, as the Vulcan security chief, apart from being, well, Vulcan, had a wife and four children back home and would never be unfaithful to them even in thought.   Then, more than four years after they had started their journey together, her reaction to Tom's behaviour over the Moneans had started Chakotay wondering in a different direction. 

 Chakotay had watched them working together on the bridge for years now, occasionally smiling at each other with the understanding of two Starfleet brats, their similar upbringings giving them similar reactions to situations.  He had watched the way she couldn't seem to resist standing by her pilot's side and resting her hand on his shoulder.  Or the way Paris would turn to look up at her and sometimes seem to receive instructions telepathically, preparing to carry them out before she'd even got around to vocalising them.  Chakotay usually filtered all this from his mind, because contemplation of the implications had always unsettled him.  But the truth, and he had seen it long before now, if he cared to admit it, was that Paris had been hers for the asking ever since the day they first met.  She had never asked; she never would.  But that didn't mean that the feeling was necessarily all in one direction. 

Chakotay had seen friendships like this before.  Friendships that never got further than eye contact and smiles and loyalty, Platonic partnerships as solid as any marriage, and just as devastating when they went sour.  He simply didn't know what he could do to help put this one right, but he knew he had to find a way, for all their sakes.

 

 

 

Left alone in her ready room, Janeway was almost entirely unaware that she had been pacing for several minutes.  She was angry, preoccupied with her fury, although a small insistent voice at the back of her mind told her she was being unreasonable.

Damn Chakotay, for bringing up feelings she still didn't feel ready to confront!  Life was complicated enough already; she had too many responsibilities, too much else to worry about to be able to take the time to deal with this now.  The ship was her main preoccupation, and if some crew member was unhappy with the way she was running it, that was his problem and he'd better knuckle down and keep his mouth shut about it.  She couldn't please everybody all of the time, neither was it her duty to try.  She had to consider the wider perspective, and they still had a hell of a long way to go.  So Tom Paris was moping because she'd made a command decision, well that was just too bad.  He would have to conquer his self pity and pull himself together, because no one else was going to do it for him, even if he had managed to convince Chakotay and Tuvok with his wounded puppy act.

Her anger still flared up, white hot and bright, whenever she thought about Paris.  She remembered with clarity the sick feeling on realising that her faithful hound had slipped its leash and wasn't going to turn round and lope obediently back to her side when she called, and the subsequent fury she had felt, beyond all reason, which had carried her through those nervous hours when they recovered the delta flyer and found the occupants still alive - if considerably the worse for wear. Normally the sight of Paris, pale and battered and unconscious would have had her rushing to his side. She kept away from him, having him summoned only when he was recovered. She had refused to feel any sympathy for him, then or now. That he had refused to show her any contrition, then or since, had only made matters worse.

Betrayal was an ugly word and an ugly thing, and that was what he had done.  Betrayed her trust in him, reverted to type when she'd stuck out her neck to give him that commission and make him her chief pilot.  She should have known from the beginning that some bad personality traits simply couldn't be trained or disciplined out of some people.  He would always be a liability.  There would now always be that doubt that he might do something like that again. 

But that other annoying little voice in her head was asking her in what way had she stuck out her neck?  She'd had nothing to lose by making that appointment and everything to gain.  Paris had proved himself able to take command of a Starship bridge in battle conditions, courageous enough to risk his life to save someone else’s.  If she hadn't made him Chief Conn Officer he would probably have spent the better part of the subsequent five years peeling Leola roots or cleaning up after the Doctor.  More likely, they wouldn't have got this far anyway since (as Chakotay had just reminded her), he was the best pilot they had by far and any one of the hundred battles they'd been a part of could have turned out differently with a less talented helmsman at the controls.

She sighed, and sat down at her desk, stared at the pile of reports, proposals and other work that waited for her there.  She was tired, unbelievably weary.  Sick of this entire journey, the responsibility, the pressure, the fighting.  Why couldn't someone else do this for a while and leave her alone?  The ship hadn't been properly overhauled for five years, the crew constantly hemmed in and on the edge of stress disorders.  The beautiful, state-of-the-art Starship that she had taken command of with such pride just before they set out on their mission to the Badlands was now battered, scarred and dirty, her systems kept together by the improvisational talents of half a dozen different engineers.  Built to be the swiftest ship in the fleet, more often than not she limped along at warp 6 rather than the warp 9.9 she was theoretically capable of sustaining.  Would this journey ever end?

 

"Captain?"  It was Kim's voice which hailed her over her comm badge.  She discovered with some surprise that she'd been sitting and thinking round in circles far longer than she realised.

"Go ahead, Harry," she replied, glad to have something to respond to to take her thoughts out of this self-defeating perpetual wheel.

"The Delta Flyer is aboard, and Tuvok and Paris are both in sickbay."

"Understood."  She broke contact, a cold, heavy feeling in her stomach, like a blob of lead.  Now it began.  Now she had to go down there and face them.  Put on the Captain's face again and deal with yet another crisis. 


	4. Chapter 4

Janeway entered Sickbay only to stop at the door when she realised she had walked in on what looked like a heated argument between Paris and the Doctor.  Both were squared off inside the Doctor's little office area, nearly nose to nose, which would have been comical if the first words she had heard weren't Paris declaiming;

"You have to do it!"

"Mr Paris!"   the Doctor was obviously in full 'exasperation mode' and exasperated as only Tom Paris could exasperate him, "If you don't go back to your bed this instant....."

"You know you have to report it Doc!"

"I don't see the necessity...."

"If you don't, I'll do it myself!"

The Doctor looked like he was about to blow a holographic blood vessel so Janeway decided it was time to take a hand.  "What is this?" she demanded, making them both jump.  "Report what?"

The jump made Paris wince and clutch at his ribs, and the Doctor leaped upon this admission of weakness, grabbing his intransigent assistant by the elbow and attempting to steer him back to one of the bio beds.  Paris shook off the Doctor's grasping hand and turned to Janeway, attempting to draw himself to attention but failing to achieve the proper affect due to the fact that he plainly couldn't stand fully upright.  "Captain, I..." At Paris' moment of distraction, the Doctor took the opportunity presented and darted forwards with a loaded hypospray.  Janeway helped to catch Paris as his eyes rolled up and he went limp in the doctor's arms.

When she had to lift one of her male crew it usually took her by surprise just how heavy they felt.  She was ready for the moment of realisation that always came, that she would need more effort than she had bargained for.  It came as the opposite surprise, even though the doctor was doing most of the work, to find how insubstantial he felt with just his head and shoulders supported in her arms.  His head lolled against her shoulder, his surrender to the drug terrifyingly sudden.  Paris was drug resistant - it was even in his service record.  She had seen him take doses that would incapacitate a charging Targ and still keep a lingering grasp on consciousness.  She felt a slight prickle of worry, which she pushed to the back of her mind.   

Together they carried him over to the nearest biobed where the Doctor grabbed an instrument Janeway didn't recognise and started waving it in the general direction of his now sedated assistant's ribs.

"What was that all about?"  She demanded after a few moments silence.

"Mr Paris," the doctor told her, tight-lipped, "has insisted I put him on report."

"What for?"  She looked over to where Tuvok was lying unconscious in the surgical bay.  "Is this about Tuvok?  Is he going to be all right?"

"Mr Tuvok will make a full recovery, thanks to a competent piece of field surgery by Mr Paris.  I could have done it better."  He suspended his treatment and looked up, his expression serious with a touch of grudging admiration.  "But not by much.  Considering Tom was also seriously injured, and the conditions under which he had to operate, he couldn't really have performed better."

"So what's the problem?"  Janeway asked, now confused.

"The problem is that it was an unauthorised surgical procedure for a medically unqualified person to attempt unsupervised.  If he had failed, he would technically have been guilty of manslaughter."

"But I heard you give him permission to go ahead," Janeway protested, "In an emergency situation, after consultation...."

"The point is, that I gave permission after the fact.  Mr Paris had already carried out the operation two hours before we re-established contact."

Janeway felt her stomach plummet.  "He took the decision on himself."

"Yes, and now he's insisting I report him for it."  He started clearing away his surgical instruments.  "Captain, if Mr Paris had waited the extra two hours, even if he'd known for sure we would be able to re-establish contact, Mr Tuvok would now either be dead or permanently brain damaged."   He dumped the tray into sterilisation with an unnecessary degree of clatter.  "Tom knew he couldn't afford to wait, so he took a decision only a qualified doctor is entitled to make, knowing he was breaking Federation law, and knowing what it would mean both for him and for the Lt Commander if he failed.  Which he didn't because he's done a dozen similar procedures in simulation and knows more about emergency field surgery than most of the doctors in the Alpha quadrant.   But that doesn't alter the fact that he was not licensed or authorised to do what he did.  The decision wasn't his to make, and he better than most people on this ship knows the consequences of that."

Janeway looked down at Paris' sleeping face, his expression slightly troubled, reflecting her own inner state, and recognising that the Doctor's last comment was undoubtedly a dig at her.  "What did he expect me to do when you reported it?  He saved a life."

"What he always expects these days, probably."

"Which is?"

The doctor shrugged, "Crewman Paris has a certain piquant ring to it, don't you think?  He's never liked being an Ensign anyway."

It was such a vicious remark, especially coming from the Doctor, that it shook her.  Why would either the Doctor or Paris assume she would be looking for an excuse to demote him again when she hadn't wanted to do it the first time.

"Does he really think of me as such an ogre?"

"He does."

The Doctor's reply was so definite, carried so much quiet conviction, that it nearly made her take a step back. 

"Does that surprise you?"  The doctor pressed home his advantage.  "Do you ever review crew work-time statistics?  My medical summaries which I produce for you every month?  Mr Paris isn't the only crew member who has been worked to exhaustion over the last few weeks or months, but he is one of the most frequently targeted."

She wasn't prepared to accept the description 'targeted'.  "Everybody on this crew works long hours.  It's necessary."

"Not under the kind of relentless pressure you've been putting on Mr Paris."

"He's never complained."

He stared at her as though he couldn't believe she could be that dense.  "Complain?  He knows he can't complain!  He would never say anything, he'd think you'd think it was weak.   He thinks he's got to prove he can take whatever you see fit to dish out.  But I consider what you've been doing to him lately to be nothing short of cruelty.  Deliberate, studied, pre-meditated cruelty designed to break his spirit."

Her reaction was automatic, trained into her by years of command. "That's out of line, Doctor."

"Yes, a lot of things seem to be these days.  I remember a captain who used to take the concerns of even the most junior of her crew seriously.  I remember a captain who liked to have her ideas and assumptions challenged.  Where has she gone?  Why doesn't she care anymore that there are members of this crew for whom life can be a living hell?"

She didn't know what to say, how to respond.  She'd never seen the doctor blow up like this before.  Before she could think of suitable words to say, he continued, his tone growing even harder and less compromising.  "Tom stepped out of line - once.  You knocked him down to the ground and you've knocked him back down every time he tries to get up.  And you won't even give him the credit for keeping on trying when many crewmembers, given his situation, would have given up long ago."  His voice changed, lost its angry edge and became more thoughtful.  "Sometimes I wonder how close he came, before he found the courage to confront me and make me realise what I was doing to make things even worse."

A cold chill made its way slowly up her spine.  "You think he might have been thinking of…"

"I promised not to tell you, but it's time you knew.  He's been clinically depressed since his release from the brig, maybe longer.  He's climbed back by himself, with very little help from me, which is no mean achievement.  But things have changed for him in the last few months, and you're responsible for those changes."

She didn't respond.  She didn't actually know what to say.  She stood, a few feet from the biobed where Tom was lying, looking at both him and the doctor and trying to rationalise what had just changed.  Something had; her perspective had shifted quite abruptly.  It was like a light of a different colour had just come on and she could see shades or shadows that hadn't been visible a second before.  The Doctor's attitude, his demeanour towards his assistant had changed completely.  Her memory was of a slightly uneasy alliance between a sarcastic master and an unwilling, rather resentful subordinate.  Now the doctor was hovering over Paris as if he were - it was protective, almost parental.  She had been like that once, with this one.  It brought back flashes of memory and the feelings that had gone with the events; on the Banean homeworld, when he had collapsed and she had cradled his head on her shoulder.  The echoes of the fierce protectiveness she had felt then came back to haunt her.  So much water under the bridge since then, so many complications, so much disappointment. 

The doctor, watching her face closely, had obviously picked up the gist of what she was thinking, and he continued making his point, but now using a gentler, more conciliatory voice.  "He made a misjudgement, Captain, a decision based on an unrealistic assessment of his own status within the crew, but it was your reflection of his status on which he based his assumption.  He thought he was privileged and as immune as - certain other crewmembers, because you had led him to believe that.  And then you pulled the floor out from under him and treated him like any other nameless junior crewman.  You decided that all the things he's done for this ship and this crew weren't enough to cut him the kind of slack you'd cut Seven or Tuvok or Chakotay or B'Elanna or even myself over the years.  You turned round and swatted him like an irritating insect, without a second thought."

"That simply isn't true."

His comeback was immediate.  "Isn't it?  Last year, Seven stole a shuttle and used it to violate the sovereign territory of a race who had already refused us entry into their space.  She fired on several of their ships, disabling them, and disabled a shuttle with one of your own crewmembers on board.  Did you lock her away for thirty days as a punishment?"

"There were medical reasons…."

"…Did you demote Tuvok when he disobeyed you and attempted to trade for technology when you had already refused to do so?  Or even confine B'Elanna to quarters on the at least twelve occasions that I know of when she has committed what would technically be considered an assault against another being?" 

When she didn't answer immediately, he didn't wait for her to gather the surprised remnants of her thought patterns, but moved right along, driving home his point with all the subtlety of a Targ strangler.  "Solitary confinement is recognised as an extreme punishment everywhere in the Federation.  In fact, periods of more than seven days are medically disapproved.  Thirty days of it is unprecedented; no," he corrected himself, "It's more than that.  It's cruelty.  And not satisfied with strictly enforcing it, despite knowing that he has tendencies towards claustrophobia, you took away his rank and his status as well.  You encouraged the rest of us to constantly remind him of it on every possible occasion.  Now you have replaced him at the helm, a job which he has performed flawlessly for five years, a job at which everyone recognises he is without peer.  And since his formal punishment, if he has so much as twitched an eyelash in the wrong direction, you've slapped him down with a viciousness a few years ago I would have said you were incapable of."

He paused, maybe to give her the chance to refute what he'd said, but she didn't feel like saying anything.  Didn't feel able to say anything, she felt like her throat had been dipped in liquid nitrogen and locked up solid.  She stared at him as he dropped his confrontational stance and went over to a supply tray, where he picked up a dermal regenerator and crossed back to the biobed to tend to a bruise etched red and livid on Paris' cheekbone.  There was a silence as the bruise faded and disappeared. 

"And this is the result. He lives in fear, Captain.  Fear of you.  Fear of what you'll order next.  As far as he's concerned he might just as well be living on Cardassia, because he has just as little power and just as little freedom."

Desperate for something to do rather than just stand there feeling like the Wicked Witch of the West, she picked up a cloth and started cleaning off the grime-streaked face, earning a surprised glance from the Doctor.  

The bones in Paris' face were a little too pronounced, he had slight dark smudges around his eyes and his skin, now that it was clean, was paler than she remembered.  The overall impression was one of fragility.  How the hell could she not have noticed?

"Sometimes," the Doctor mused as he took care of a smaller contusion near his patient's ear, "he reminds me of a dog that's been hit too much and flinches whenever anyone goes near it.  He's constantly in fear of crossing the line - the trouble is, he doesn't know where the line is any more.  He seems to have lost the confidence to judge for himself.  I've seen the change in him, every day I see it.  Haven't you bothered to look?  He's lost your trust and your respect, two things that meant more than breathing to him.  You must have noticed."

He was only a hologram, but she felt too ashamed to look at him.  "No, I hadn't." 

The Doctor had obviously said what he'd had pent up, and now had run out of words.  The ensuing silence stretched between them, unbearably awkward.  She rubbed at the odd spot on Paris' face that she'd missed, the doctor found a couple of almost invisible scratches and pounced on them, looking as relieved as she was to be able to do something rather than just stand there speechless.  Whatever drug the Doctor had used had shut down Paris' consciousness totally.  There was not a flicker of reaction to either of their ministrations.  That bothered her almost more than anything.  She had stood vigil too many times over one of these biobeds in the last six years, and more often than not the occupant was the same.  He had survived alien weapons, subspace anomalies, shuttle crashes, mutations, miscarriages of alien justice and heaven knew what else, and in the end it was she and she alone who had nearly destroyed him.  Finally, she found her voice again.

"Doctor, I'm very disturbed by what I just heard."

"I'm relieved to hear it.  Because if you hadn't been, I would have wondered how much of Mr Paris' fear was justified."

She hadn't thought it possible to be any more shocked today.  She forced herself to meet his eyes.  They didn't look accusatory, but they were guarded, searching.

"Have I been that bad?"

"Yes."  Again, the voice wasn't accusing, just matter-of-fact.  And the look he gave her was more understanding than judgemental.  "It's been a hard few years, and you're no more immune than anyone else.  You are quite a bit more stubborn though."  It was clear from his tone that he was trying to soften the impact.  There wasn't much point: this wasn't the kind of realisation you could make gently, it smashed into you like someone swinging a sledgehammer at your face and your guts. 

She was relieved and annoyed in equal measure when Kim's voice sounded over the comm system.

"Captain to the bridge!"

Janeway slapped her comm badge with an unnecessary degree of force.  "Kim, can't it wait?"

"Five ships are heading our way, Captain, and they look aggressive."  That was Kim-speak for, 'no it damn well can't wait, why the hell do you think I called you in the first place?'  She sighed.

"I'm on my way."  She looked back at the Doctor.  "We will talk about this."  Then she ran, for the bridge and away from the doctor and his patient, ignoring whatever remark the Doctor called after her.

 

The Doctor didn't see her departure as a retreat, but he felt very frustrated that they seemed to have made so much progress only to be interrupted by unfortunate timing.

"It's not me you need to…" he called after her, but the sickbay main doors had already closed behind her.  He would just have to hope that the demands of her captaincy wouldn't make her forget the conversation they'd just had and the realisations she'd made.  Shaking his head, the Doctor returned to his patient's side.  Selecting the correct hypospray and applying it to Paris' neck, the Doctor only had to wait for a couple of seconds before his eyes fluttered and opened. 

 

Paris groaned, bright light bursting into his brain and feeling returning through his body in a rush.  "You didn't have to spike me like that."

"Yes I did.  Trust me."  The Doctor ran a tricorder over his ribs and closed the instrument with an air of ineffable satisfaction.  "I have patched you up, yet again, with my usual skill and although you shouldn't really be on your feet yet, I know that won't stop you so why delay the inevitable?"

Paris swung his legs off the biobed and sat up, but didn't stand.  It took a moment for vertigo to stop swirling in his head.  "What did the captain say?"

"Very little.  She listened, for a change.  However, I explained the situation to her…"

"…I bet you sugar coated it.  That's why you didn't want me butting in."

"The one thing I did not do, Mr Paris, is sugar coat what I said."

Paris noticed the Doctor looked angry.

"She didn't blame you, did she?  For teaching me too much?"

"You just saved Tuvok's life and we both know it.  I just made sure she knew it too.  Now, perhaps you'd care to run a final scan over Mr Tuvok before I wake him up and send him on his way?"

Paris hadn't quite come down from the adrenaline high yet and it rang in his nerves and blood, distant but unmistakeable.  Even the sedative the doctor had given him hadn't been able to rid his system of it completely.  Modern drugs were very specific and very targeted; from his recent studies he knew that the drug the doctor had used to knock him out had shut down one section of his brain and affected virtually nothing else, so that when it was reversed there were no lingering effects.  He felt completely alert.

"Got it," Paris slid off the bed and picked up a tricorder, going over to the surgical bay, as the doctor continued in a conversational tone.

"You might be interested to know that according to your medical records there are now only three bones in your entire body that you have not at some time in your life broken, cracked or chipped.  When it gets down to one, it'll be the richest betting pool on the ship."

"I hope you're not thinking of rigging the game."  Paris pressed the control to retract the diagnostic arch.  "His vital signs are all at normal, Doc.  Shall I wake him?"

"No, under the circumstances, I think I'll do that."  The doctor sought out a second hypospray and stepped forward to check the main diagnostic console surrounding the entrance to the surgical bay.  "I want to run another cranial scan, just to make sure.  You go and get something to eat; from the message Kim just summoned the captain with, they may be sending us some business soon, and I want you alert enough for triage."

It was pretty obvious the Doc didn't want Paris in the room when he woke up Tuvok, any more than he'd wanted him conscious when he spoke to the Captain.  Once, he would have been suspicious of the Doctor's motives but these days the hologram was one of the few people on board he actually trusted to look after his interests.  He nodded and left Sickbay.  He wanted some time to himself to do some thinking anyway.

He seemed to have run through a whole range of emotions he hadn't been sure he still knew how to feel before today.  First, the pleased surprised on being sought out by Tuvok, quietly courteous as ever, to accompany the Vulcan in preference to any other officer.  Then the sheer visceral delight of sitting in the pilot's seat of the Delta Flyer, whisking her away towards the unknown.  In some ways, the Flyer was more his than Voyager would ever be; he had designed it, fought for it to be built.  It had more in common with a fighter than a shuttle, power, responsiveness, manoeuvrability.  It excited him more than Voyager - but he loved it less.

Given the quiet, rather detached life he had been living lately, just taking the Flyer out for a few hours would have been enough to satisfy him.  But life was never that simple, not for him.  Relaxed pleasure had turned to stunned surprise as the outing went completely south.  Everything that could go wrong, had.

 

Then, worst of all had come the terror.  Not the fear of nearly burning up in the gas giant's atmosphere, tumbling out of control into a swirling maelstrom of burning gasses; no, then there had been no time to think or feel fear, only the need to react, to pilot, to fly as he had been trained, beyond the limits of what was possible for most people.  There was no pride in that knowledge, it simply was.  The cold, stomach clenching, mind freezing terror had come later, when he had scanned Tuvok and realised what he had to do to keep him alive, and what it would mean if he failed.  And the ice cold realisation that came afterwards, when he had spent hours sitting in the silent dark by Tuvok's side, watching over a fragile life and knowing that he wasn't exactly flavour of the month back home; wondering how the increasingly hard-eyed and unforgiving captain would react when she found out he'd broken yet more rules.

He wondered what the Doctor had said to her while he'd been out.

Everyone Paris passed in the corridors on the way to the mess hall greeted him with friendly acknowledgement.  It surprised him slightly, and he supposed that it hadn't occurred to him before, that both crewmen and Ensigns greeted him with the honorific 'Sir' as they passed.  Theoretically he was no longer a 'Sir' to any Ensign on board since they all had more time in rank than he did.  Perhaps he hadn't cared to notice before - he had been rather wrapped up in himself recently.

Sometimes, he mused as he walked, it took something like this to remind you that you were still alive, still part of a community of living beings with whom you had connections and for whom you felt both affection and responsibility.  And until you did realise that, it somehow escaped you that those people also felt affection for you. 

Whatever else those few hours away from Voyager had done, he knew it had succeeded in reconnecting him to this community, made him feel a part of it again, not a silent observer pining for some undefinable loss.

Word of his adventures had spread to the mess hall and Neelix greeted him with gusto as he walked in.  The amiable Talaxian darted out from behind his serving counter, enthusiastic as a puppy.

"Tom!  The surgeon returns!"  Neelix reached out to draw Paris further into the room, leading him towards the bank of replicators, "All that hard work must have given you a healthy appetite. What'll it be?"

Paris remembered he was still in debit for the pizza he'd replicated himself two nights ago.  "I haven't got any replicator rations at the moment," he told Neelix.

"Well that's okay…  I'll get it for you, I don't mind lending you some for a celebration!"

He shook his head, "Thanks, Neelix.  I'm kinda skating on thin ice right now.  I'll just have the special."

"Okay," Neelix said agreeably, dishing out a plateful of steaming glop and handing it over, "but the offer's still open."

"Thanks, Neelix."  Paris beat a retreat into a quiet corner before the Talaxian could see that he was tearing up slightly.  Neelix was a kind and generous person, but he hadn't been that co-operative with some of Paris' more ambitious schemes in the past.  Paris had felt recently that he was a bit of a poor relation where the cook was concerned, having to beg for things that other people would have been granted without question.  It had damaged his feelings of friendship for Neelix a little and now he felt ashamed and a little embarrassed, and he didn't want it to show.  His emotions could be so close to the surface these days he just had to be a little careful.  He took an experimental mouthful of the casserole and wrinkled his nose slightly.  It wasn't too bad, and at least it was hot and nutritious.  He supposed it could have been a lot worse.  Right now, he could have been sitting in the brig staring a stewed tomato ration-pack in the face.  He'd kind of gone off tomatoes in the last few years, too. 

Thinking about how that operation on Tuvok might have turned out brought back that cold, clenched feeling deep in his stomach.  He wondered if having to make decisions like that, feeling that weight of responsibility for another life, scared the Captain as much as it scared him.  

Paris had his third spoonful of Pleeka Rind Casserole halfway to his mouth when the Red Alert went off.  Like all the other occupants of the mess hall, he dropped the spoon and ran for the door, momentarily hindered when the ship rocked and shuddered from a blast of weapons fire.  Just outside the mess hall, he checked his forward momentum and stood for a moment as everyone else around him continued their plunge towards their duty stations.  His first impulse had been to get to the bridge, but he was no longer a bridge officer and he knew that his duty lay in Sickbay.

By the time he got there, they already had customers.

 

 

The Doctor's three junior assistants had not yet arrived when Paris ran through the door, snatching up a medical tricorder without even needing to think about where it was located.  The Doctor experienced a moment of relief.  He handed over the triage area without a word and started to set up the surgical bay. 

Over the last few months they had practised for emergencies like this time and time again, but had never been tested for real.  The last time they had had to deal with as many wounded, under such conditions, he and Paris had still been at odds, Paris had been an indifferent assistant at best, and unavailable when he was really needed because the Captain would inevitably have commandeered him to fly the ship.  

He watched out of the corner of his eye as Paris took over triage, gathered the other assistants as they lurched in through the door and put them to work, and left the Doctor to handle the difficult cases he sent his way. 

In a moment of pause between two patients, The Doctor allowed himself to feel a surge of pride for what he had created; a team that functioned even under these conditions.   But the biggest difference was undoubtedly in Paris, who only a few months ago had been hesitant and uncertain, and now handled the sickbay equipment in the way he had always handled a helm console; without conscious thought, as an extension of his own mind.  The boy was a natural commander when he had the confidence to be, why couldn't Captain Janeway see that?      

Space battles, once joined, didn't normally take all that long to resolve.  The vast distances in space were outweighed by the speed of the combatants and the incredible targeting accuracy of weapons, so that a ship that didn't get torn to pieces within the first few minutes was probably the winner by default.  Then there was the other sort of battle, the one where very little fire was exchanged but which seemed to go on forever, like a kind of perpetual cat and mouse game.  After more than an hour had passed, it became clear that they were participating in one of those.  The ship had taken perhaps four hits altogether, well-spaced apart, but each one had resulted in a flood of casualties into sickbay.  Some three hours into the confrontation it seemed like they'd treated perhaps half the crew for some burn, fracture, sprain or other minor ailment, and they'd had nearly fifteen serious injuries, mostly from the lower decks. 

The Doctor was just getting started on his eighth surgical case when the ship lurched wildly to one side and canted downwards at thirty degrees for a split second.   He braced his about-to-go-flying patient against the table and demanded irritably, "What the devil was that!"

"Best guess?"  Paris responded without looking up from the mesenteric artery he was sealing with practised, confident concentration, "I'd say the Upstart just blew a gamma ten manoeuvre."

The doctor fell silent for about ten seconds, concentrating on his own patient.

"Can't have done," he finally said when he had finished the delicate procedure.

"Why not?" asked Paris.

"Because he's been in the treatment queue for the last ten minutes."

Paris glanced over to the wall by the door where a bloodsoaked and pathetic collection of humanity huddled miserably on the floor, waiting to be seen in turn.  Ensign Culhane was one of them, cradling one arm and sporting some noticeable burns on his face and neck.    Paris frowned at him and demanded, "Who's at the conn?"

"Commander Chakotay," Culhane told him, his face sheened with sweat and his entire body shivering with pain.

"Well, that explains it."

"Do you need to go to the bridge?"  the Doctor asked Paris.   Paris looked up, his eyes showing perhaps a flash of desire for an instant.  Then he went back to his patient. 

"If they need me they'll call."   He looked up at the beefy crewman who had been drafted in to act as orderly, "I'm finished here.  Over to the recovery area, please."   The crewman lifted the unconscious man on the bio bed and carried him away.   Wasting no time, Paris hurried over with his tricorder to the five people by the door and started assessing them.   None of them had urgent life threatening conditions, so the next priority was who had to get back on duty fastest.

"Well, Ensign Culhane, I guess you're next.  Let's get you back on duty as fast as we can - at least you can actually fly," Paris helped him up and supported him over to the just vacated bio bed.   For a second, the young ensign glanced doubtfully over at the Doctor as if he would really prefer not to be treated by Paris, but he sensibly held out his hand for a detailed assessment.

"That's not what you told me my last assessment," he responded after a couple of seconds to Paris' remark.

"I'm supposed to be mean to you during assessment, it makes you work harder.  Well, that's the Starfleet theory.  You were getting overconfident.  Get too cocky and eventually it'll catch up with you.  If you're at the conn when that happens, people will die, and I might be one of them.  Rumours to the contrary, that would not make me happy.  You've got a compound fracture on your forearm, some badly torn muscles, and your thumb joint's going to need reconstructing," he told Culhane, before looking up and projecting some reassurance at him, which the younger man evidently received as intended because his dubious expression at Paris' competence changed into something obviously more preoccupied with his injuries.  "I'll give you something for the pain, but it's going to take a little time.  If an urgent case comes in I may have to leave you for a while, but you can't go back on duty till it's done."  

Culhane nodded and resumed his self-pitying expression, and Paris signalled one of the support staff for a new tray of instruments before getting to work dulling the pain so he could tug it about.

There was some awkwardness between them.  Culhane had been one of Paris' staff, one of the regular helm relief officers.  He had been lucky enough to be on duty during an attack so that he could prove his piloting skills to the senior staff.  Prior to that, Paris had always been at the helm in times of serious crisis.   Having come at last to the attention of the captain, he had basked, not unreasonably, in his sudden promotion to the prestige alpha shift.

"So, that's what you call me, huh?" he asked Paris after more than a minutes silence.

"What?" asked Paris, his mind focussed more on his medical task than his patient's not quite conversational tone.

"The Upstart."

Paris looked up, shaken for a moment out of his contemplation of joints and tendons.  He realised that the young pilot must have heard the remark he made to the doctor and felt instantly ashamed that he'd allowed his private thoughts to intrude out of his mouth.

"I'm sorry, that was out of line.  You're a good pilot, and you deserved a break.  Not this sort, I mean," He indicated the hand, and got a chuckle out of his patient.

"Hey, look, I was green as hell when I came on board.  If I am a good pilot now, it's because you made me one."

Paris smiled, still mostly absorbed with his medical task.  "Just carrying on the tradition, huh?"

"I couldn't let them think your training didn't do me any good."  After a pause, Culhane continued in a slightly lower voice.  "A lot of people don't feel too good about what's been happening.  None of us wanted opportunities at your expense."

"I appreciate that."

"Anyway," Culhane said indignantly, after a short pause during which Paris tended to the fracture, "I wouldn't blow a gamma ten."

"Did I teach you arrogance, too?"

"Of course."  Culhane's voice was just a little strained, and it was clear he was a lot less comfortable being on the business end of an osteogenic stimulator than he was flying a hot ship.  Paris smiled to himself, remembering a time when he had felt the same.  He'd got over it a lot younger than Culhane, though, due to repeated exposure.

"Can you actually complete those flight simulations you write?"  Culhane asked him after yet another pause.  Paris realised the younger man was talking primarily to keep his own mind off the treatment - not that it could possibly have been any more than mildly uncomfortable.

"I wouldn't write them if I couldn't," he replied.  "Why?"

"Because your gamma alpha three program has trashed me five times in a row."

That didn't surprise him.  He'd written them to be challenging. "There is a way through it.  You should have asked."

"Would you show me sometime?"

"I don't know where I stand when it comes to pilot training at the moment.  I guess I'll have to clear it with the Commander."

"My re-certification is coming up soon.  What's the point of Chakotay doing it when I can fly circles round him?  What am I going to learn?"

Paris raised an eyebrow, "Diplomacy?"  From across the room he heard a chuckle.  No doubt the Doctor found the notion of Tom Paris exhorting someone to exercise tact and verbal restraint very funny.  Finishing the repairs to the minor injuries he took another look at the thumb joint and found himself immediately uncertain.  It was worse than he'd originally thought and he wasn't sure of his own ability to treat it quickly.  Hand control was very important to pilots - he decided he'd much rather not take a risk.

"Doc?"  He asked.  "This thumb joint.  I think we should reschedule for when we have more time.  I wouldn't want to risk Culhane not getting full hand movement back."

The doctor left his patient for a moment to study the tricorder results Paris was holding out to him.  "Okay, put an isometric restraint over the whole forearm and we'll schedule him in sometime tomorrow."

The ship lurched again, even more violently.

"Assuming there is a tomorrow."  The doctor commented in a mild tone of voice, under the circumstances.

Impatience snapping in his eyes, Paris slapped at his comm badge, "Paris to Bridge."

Tuvok's voice answered, "We're a little preoccupied just now," 

"Yeah, I'd guessed.  Would someone please tell the idiot who's flying this thing that he just nearly cost me a patient!  Paris out!"   He terminated contact without waiting for a reply, not really wanting to hear one, and that off his chest, went back to his ministrations.

"Spoken like a true Starfleet surgeon," the Doctor said approvingly.   Paris spared him a quick smile.  Culhane, still holding his hand out and in no immediate danger of dying (at least no more than anyone else on board), couldn't suppress a grin.

"Chakotay to Paris," the reply had taken several seconds to materialise, perhaps the commander had been too busy to reply, or perhaps he'd simply been taken aback by the sheer audacity of the interruption, "If you think you can do better, get up here."

Although it was what he'd wanted to hear, some devil inside Paris decided to play hard to get.  "Sorry, Commander, I'm up to my elbows in intestines right now."

"Damnit, Paris!"  Chakotay bellowed, "Report to the bridge NOW!"

"I think that's your cue," the Doctor remarked.   "Get going, Mr Paris, I can cope perfectly well without you."

He flashed a decidedly wolfish grin as he left Sickbay at Mach 1.


	5. Chapter 5

Paris dashed down the hallway and to the nearest turbolift, which took several seconds to respond when summoned.  He shifted restlessly from foot to foot as he waited, the extra adrenaline over and above that required for his medical duties starting to flood his body, sharpen his senses and perception of time even further.   He couldn't have gone to the bridge until summoned, not even in these circumstances, but he knew that was where he belonged.  It was just that he depended on his superiors to know it too.

When the turbo lift arrived, Seven was already on board.   She lifted one imperturbable eyebrow as he literally bounced inside and ordered for the bridge.

"Captain Proton to the rescue again?"  She asked.  Her sense of humour was subtle but sharp and extreme danger did not seem to blunt it.  He liked both of those characteristics.

"And the secretary always tags along," he pointed out.   She gave him a look that would have microwaved his liver, if she had meant it genuinely.

At that moment, just as Seven opened her mouth to reply, a vast force grabbed the ship and flung her sideways, the lift lurched and canted, the lights went out, and both of them went flying, first up and to one side, then back down, landing in a tangled heap on a floor that shuddered with aftershocks for several moments.   Then there was silence, a deep, black, devastating silence all around them.

 

 

Several decks above, on the bridge, the massive sideswipe had taken them all by surprise too.  It had knocked Chakotay clean across the command platform, tossed Janeway out of her chair, and caused Kim to bash his head against the bulkhead by the ops console.  Chakotay had a lucky escape; just as he went flying, the helm console disintegrated in a massive coruscation of white sparks, sending globs of fire over half the bridge and starting half a dozen secondary fires.  The flickering red glow of the flames was the only illumination left on the bridge once the ship had settled back onto an even keel.

 

 

Paris realised he'd had a soft landing and hoped Seven wouldn't hold it against him.  She was starting to move too, and the two of them wordlessly shook themselves off and groped for an emergency access panel which contained standard issue wrist torches.  Paris got his switched on a couple of seconds before Seven, and scanned the twisted interior of the turbo car with the narrow beam.

Well, getting to the bridge wasn't an option anymore, neither would there be much point.  He could tell from the almost subliminal silence that not only was Voyager's warp core off line and powered down, but she didn't have so much as manoeuvring thrusters.  She was completely dead and main computer power was obviously off line too.

"Maybe we hit one of those invisible mines that took out the Delta Flyer," Paris speculated.  "They seemed to have some kind of electromagnetic feedback effect that fried every system on board."

"The Delta Flyer exhibited very little evidence of impact damage," Seven countered.  "This pod was thrown off its moorings by some inertial effect."

"Sure looks that way," he agreed.  "Looks like the emergency clamps have worked okay though.  Let's find a way out of here."

Between them, Paris and Seven managed to open the roof access hatch off the turbolift car, crawl out and lever apart the doors to deck 3.

 

Deck three didn't look to be in that much better state than the turbo lift pod.  The emergency lighting was still functional but little else was.  The deck seemed deserted, which was not that big a surprise as it was the principal officers' habitation deck and there were no key battle stations here.  A wall status panel just down the hallway from the lift shaft stuttered and flickered.  Seven tapped a couple of sections but elicited no response.  She jabbed a bit harder and then harder still.

"Forget it," Paris advised her.  "Looks like the entire ODN network is down."  The status panel having proved less than helpful, Paris wandered over to the nearby viewport and stared out, leaving Seven still attempting to torture information out of the computer.

His frustration almost immediately boiled over.   "Damnit!"  he burst out, "Look at the way those five ships are deployed!  One quantum torpedo would disable the whole lot of them!"

Seven joined him at the viewport, "If we could manually target, arm and launch it," she pointed out, "which we can't."

An idea struck.  "Or maybe an antimatter explosion!"  Paris exclaimed.  "Like a Shuttle Warp Core overload."

Seven took another assessing look out at the five ships.  "That would destroy rather than disable."

"At this point, I'll take what I can get."  Where his beloved Voyager was involved, Paris had no finer feelings whatsoever for anyone out to do her harm, "C'mon, we can get to Bay 2 through the Jeffries tubes."

As they sweated their way down a ladder  (Paris sweated, Seven showed no evidence of doing so), Seven pointed out, "A shuttle would be targeted and destroyed before it could be manoeuvred into position."

"Not if they didn't see it coming," Paris panted, turning to wait for her once he hit the Deck 5 level.

"Since none of our shuttles are equipped with cloaking devices, I fail to see your point."

 

Just then the access port at the far end of one of the tubes leading off from the ladder well popped open and the Doctor's voice echoed down the tube, "Mr Paris!"

Paris crawled to meet him halfway, followed a few feet behind by Seven.

"The normal sickbay systems are off line," the Doctor reported. "Fortunately, I had just transferred to my mobile emitter to answer an emergency summons from Deck eight when everything went down; power, communications, everything.  I was attempting to reach the bridge."

"No," objected Paris.   "Get to Engineering, Doc.  My guess is the main routers were hit, and that means the lower decks have probably taken heavy damage."

"I would concur with that assessment," Seven agreed.

"Where are you going?"  The Doctor asked.

"To get creative."  Paris told him, turning around to crawl back the way he'd come.

"Is this 'creative' going to result in more casualties?" the Doctor called after him.

"I don't have time to explain!" Paris called back, and kept going. Seven, now at his side rather than behind him, easily kept pace.

"We don't have much time," Paris commented, picking up the pace slightly as they came to the next ladder-well.  "I want to get the drop on these guys before they have the chance to move their ships out of formation.  We've got to come at them from behind."

"You wish to slingshot the shuttle around the moon and approach them from the opposite vector?  And you wish me to calculate the appropriate overload vectors to coincide with the shuttle's reappearance."  Seven concluded.

"If it were that simple, I could do it myself.  How much Starfleet history do you recall, Seven?"

"I have access to the memories of several Starfleet personnel.  However, the Borg do not retain memories which are not relevant for the required tasks."  

"Well I grew up on stories of the old Enterprise and her crew."

"How does that assist us in our present predicament?"  

"It gave me the idea," he explained. "I want to slingshot the shuttle, at warp, around the system's primary, on remote piloting because I sure as hell ain't riding it."  

Seven considered the subspace physics involved.

"You wish to send the shuttle back through time?"

"That's right," he was pleased she'd got the point so quickly, "but it's got to be right to the second, Seven.   I want the shuttle to reappear behind the ships the second we launch her from here so they're so distracted at our launch they don't see it coming."

Seven stared at him with her mouth very nearly open.   "A class two shuttle with its warp core already set on overload?"

Paris pouted, "C'mon, Seven, if Mr Spock could do it on a hundred year old technology, surely you can do it?  Or are you saying you aren't as smart as a mere half Vulcan?"

Her beautiful eyes flashed at the challenge to her intellect, and he could see she was already starting to formulate the calculations, as he knew she would.  She couldn't resist a direct challenge.  In that way she was very human.   

"Just calculate me the flight plan, and I'll do the rest," he negotiated.

"It is technically possible," she admitted grudgingly after a few moment's prodigious mental arithmetic.  "But you will lose contact with the shuttle within a few seconds.  You will have to pre-program the entire sequence."

"That's not a problem.  The shuttle's navigational computer can handle it."

They crawled on for a few more seconds in silence before Seven commented, "I am relieved."

"About what?" he asked

"When you first mentioned the shuttlebay, I thought you planned to take out a shuttle yourself."

"I don't have a deathwish, Seven.  Anyway, there wouldn't be any point.  I wouldn't stay conscious long enough to do any good."

"Without the need for life support or full inertial dampers, the shuttle will have a greater probability of achieving its objective," Seven decided after a few moments more of silent crawling.

"Tell me it's possible with a class two?  I'll use the Delta Flyer if I have to, but I'd rather not."

"There would be no practical advantage to using the Delta Flyer.  It is more difficult to remote pilot and the power utilisation algorithms are considerably more complex."

 

They reached bay two, the storage bay which acted as an inner compartment to the landing and launching area.  The bulkhead between the two bays was closed which was good in that it allowed bay two to remain pressurised in the event of a containment failure in the main bay, and allowed access to the shuttle itself, but bad in that without power they would have to find a way to open the bulkhead to allow the shuttle to exit.  They found and gathered up two slightly battered stray crewmen on the way, and while Seven went into the shuttle to make her calculations, Paris took them and hooked up the Delta Flyer's power source to the access nodes of the bulkhead.  He used the independent systems of the flyer (which were still on line, having been replaced only an hour before the attack) to tap into nearby auxiliary sensor nodes and take a scan of the immediate exterior of the ship, and not for the first time, mentally congratulated the shuttle recovery engineering team for the fast turnaround on what had been a nearly unusable spacecraft only a few hours before.  The scan showed that the five ships hadn't moved yet but Paris knew his luck wouldn't hold for much longer.  Under his direction, the two crewmen ran an old-fashioned power umbilical from the Flyer through into Voyager's secondary power distribution system.  With enough juice to get diagnostic readings back from Voyager, he shook his head at the extent of damage the ship had suffered. 

"If we don't get these five ships off our backs, we're dead," he commented. 

"Half of the nodes in this distribution net are not responding," crewman Robins told him, pointing out the appropriate readouts as Paris came to lean over his shoulder.  "I can't get a clear pathway through to anywhere but decks six through four, and only about a third of those."

"Does that include Sickbay?" Paris asked.

"I… Yes, I think so."

"Good.  Route the Flyer's power through to sickbay and try to restore systems."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm gonna go see how Seven's doing.  You two stay here and fire up the Delta's weapons systems as well.  Once the bulkhead and space doors are open, if you see anything move that isn't the shuttle, fry it.  Those guys are gonna board this ship before long, and we're really pushing our luck now."

"Where will you be sir?" the other crewman, Henstridge, asked, looking concerned that maybe Paris was going to do something crazy like fly the shuttle out himself.  Paris hadn't had time to explain the entire plan to his two new recruits so he understood their concern and appreciated it.

"I'm going back to Sickbay as soon as the shuttle's set to go.  As long as I've got power up there, I can remote fly her better from there and, if we are boarded, I'm gonna flood the bay with aneasthazine, so make sure you've got spacesuits."

"Yes, sir." Both crewmen repeated, both looking worried that they might turn out to be Voyagers first line of defence against hostile boarders. 

"You'll be fine," he reassured them before leaving the flyer for the smaller shuttle on the other side of the bay.  "And try to re-route all that scanning data up to the bridge!"

 

 

 

On the bridge, Harry Kim and Tuvok between them were fighting desperately to get the sensors back on line.   Helm was completely dead, the console twisted and blackened, and Chakotay had abandoned it to tackle the various fires that had broken out around the bridge perimeter.   While he did that, the Captain passed out torches and hauled out the emergency medical kit that Paris kept below the now destroyed conn.  The kit was smoke-blackened but the contents had survived more or less unscathed.   With a shaking hand she injected herself with enough stimulant to make a bull elephant do pirouettes - knowing she was going to catch hell from the doctor if they got out of this alive but well past caring.    The shakes faded as she felt the drug flood her body.

"Harry, where are those damn sensors?"  She snarled.

Kim employed a non-Starfleet technique he had undoubtedly learned from Captain Proton, and gave the underside of his station a hefty kick.  A previously dead panel flickered feebly into life and he pounced on it.

"Five ships, all clustered dead ahead of us," he reported.   "I can't tell if they have weapons powered."

"They won't shoot now," she decided, crossing to stare over his shoulder at the readout he had managed to persuade out of the moribund sensors.   "They think we're dead in the water."

"We are dead in the water," Chakotay pointed out, still wielding a fire extinguisher down by the auxiliary science station.

"They'll take their time picking us over now we're no threat to them."   Janeway stabbed at the back ops panel which was showing some signs of life but got nothing coherent out of it.  "Tuvok, any communications left at all?"

"No Captain.   The main computer is down.   Backups haven't come on line.  Emergency Life support is still operational on all decks, but I can't get communications from anywhere in the ship."

"Either they knew just where to hit us," Chakotay commented, "or they were incredibly lucky."

"We've had our share of luck in the past.  It had to run out eventually," she replied.

"Captain," reported Kim, "I just got power from somewhere.  I think I can get main viewer."

"Do it."  She whirled round to target her tactical officer, "Tuvok, I don't care how you do it, but get me Engineering, now."

The main viewer came on reluctantly, at about half normal brilliance.  Chakotay and Janeway both moved to the command platform to get a better perspective. 

"Well, they obviously don't consider us any sort of threat now, do they?" Janeway commented.  Chakotay nodded.

"Either that, or they have a very inexperienced commander."

Both of them had seen immediately what Paris had seen a few minutes earlier.  The fleet that had disabled them was congregated in a way that made them incredibly vulnerable to attack.

"They must feel very secure."  Janeway looked around at the wrecked and smoking remains of her hitherto shiny and neat bridge.  "With good reason." 

"They don't appear to have transporter technology," Tuvok commented.

"No, or they'd have taken the ship by now.  They're going to have to do it the hard way - but they don't seem to be in any particular hurry."

"They know we're not going anywhere," Chakotay said, tugging at the hatch to the port side Jefferies tube and peering inside.

"Captain," called Kim.  "Secondary systems are coming back on line, I think I can get communications with Engineering."

"Put them on," she ordered, hurrying over to the Ops station.

B'Elanna's dishevelled and grimy face appeared on the screen at Kim's console, "Captain, we've taken a real beating down here.  We had to dump the core, and the Impulse control interplexes are shredded.  I can't even give you thrusters right now."

Janeway didn't waste time responding.  "B'Elanna, I need someone to get to the forward torpedo launchers, now."

"Sorry, Captain, we're still trying to cut our way through to the forward sections.  Vorik and I are the only two still standing down here.  Fortunately, the Doctor arrived a few minutes ago."

Just then the link to engineering flickered and faded out. Janeway swore and Kim repeated his earlier act of terrorism on the station, this time to no effect.

"Secondary systems just failed again," he reported. 

Chakotay crawled backwards out of the Jefferies hatch and reported, "The tube is blocked with debris a deck down.  It's going to take time to get through it."

"Try the other one," Janeway ordered

"Already did.  The hatch is jammed, I can't get it open."

"Captain," Tuvok cut in, "Power is being routed to my console.  I'm registering a shuttle launch."  

"Bless you, B'Elanna…"  she hastened over to Tuvok's station.

Kim frowned, still trying to make sense of readings he hadn't seen since Academy.  "I don't think it came from engineering."

She ignored that and concentrated on the shuttle.  "Who's on board?"

"It's not reporting any life forms aboard," Kim called over to her, "I think it's being remote piloted."

"Where from?"

"I - I can't tell."  He stabbed frantically at another area of his console, frowning in his effort to interpret the signals he was getting back.  "Somewhere on Deck five.  Sickbay, I think."

"Paris," decided Janeway, "But what the hell is he up to?"

Brilliance from the screen lit up the bridge for a split second before the main viewer cut out, leaving them back in darkness again.  The ship rocked violently before the inertial dampers managed one last valiant surge and restored equilibrium.

"What the hell?" exclaimed Chakotay, wiping his streaming eyes.  Kim and Janeway did likewise,   

Slowly, the viewer edged back, and they stared at the debris of the five ships.

"What just happened?" asked Janeway to no one in particular.

"Sensors report an antimatter explosion,"  Tuvok told her,  "which appears to have a Starfleet Warp signature."

Janeway watched the shuttle on the screen accelerate towards the sun and disappear into warp.   Quite suddenly, she started to laugh.   "You cunning devil!"

"I beg your pardon?" asked Chakotay.

"It seems," said Tuvok, catching on a few seconds after Janeway, "That Mr Paris' predilection for history has come to our aid yet again."

"Who did the calculations though?"   Janeway asked,

"Seven was also on her way to the bridge when we were disabled.  I would surmise that a collaboration ensued."

"Would somebody please mind telling me what just happened?" Asked Kim, looking bewildered.

"You might want to brush up on your USS Enterprise history, Mr Kim."  Tuvok suggested.

"Yes sir," Kim said, still looking bewildered.

"Are there any signs of any other ships in the vicinity?"  Janeway asked, cutting through his confusion and bringing him back to the demands of the moment.

"I… I can't tell, Captain," Kim reported apologetically.  "Long range sensors are out, short range sensors are… they're out too."

"All tactical systems are down," Tuvok reported.

"And all propulsion systems."  Kim added.

"Main computer is still down," Chakotay observed, "but the backup - no, the backups keep failing too."

After a pause to rein in her temper, Janeway decided to change tack.

"What have we got that actually works?"

Kim consulted his station again.  "Life support, the gravity grid and structural integrity fields are all more or less operational," he reported.  That was to be expected.  They were independent systems with independent and separated power sources.

"The Delta Flyer and our other two remaining shuttles appear to be undamaged and functional," Tuvok reported.  "Someone appears to have linked the Delta Flyer's power source through into the secondary grid."

"That was good thinking," Chakotay commented.  "Seven or Paris, probably."

"Sickbay systems are back on line through the dedicated emergency backup systems, and all except four escape pods are reporting functional."  Kim continued.  He stopped talking.

She stared at him.  "That's it?"

He looked sheepish.  "I can't tell.  The primary ODN network is off line and half of the backup junctions are fried.  Internal communications are patchy - I'm getting data streams from half the ship I can't interpret, and no voice at all."

"Great.  What else can go wrong!"  There was a brief pause, and she realised she had been automatically waiting for a smart come-back from a certain pilot who would undoubtedly have found a way to put things into perspective.  When it didn't come, she felt deprived and disappointed.   She wasn't the only one on the bridge who had taken an automatic pause.  Kim shifted uncomfortably, searching for something to say to fill the gap, but to her surprise it was Tuvok who commented, "At least there appears to be no Leola Root stew on the menu this evening."

It was not what Paris would have said, but it was close enough.

"There's no menu on the menu this evening," Chakotay pointed out.  "Replicators are all off line, by the look of it.  Guess we're back to ration packs again for a few days."

 

At that point, the jammed door to the Jefferies tube on the starboard side of the bridge burst outwards and Vorik slithered out, quickly followed by two more engineering staff carrying emergency power cells.

"Report!"  ordered Janeway.

"All computer links in both primary and secondary data cores have been disrupted," Vorik told her.  "The main computer core is powered down, but the data is undamaged;  Lt Torres will attempt to re-initialise in six minutes time."

"Casualties?"

"Unknown at this time, but Engineering sustained extensive damage.  No fatalities have been reported however.  Lieutenant Torres has deployed as many crewmembers as she could contact to the shuttle and cargo bays in readiness to repel boarders."

"Tuvok," Janeway ordered, "Get down there and start prioritising repairs to the rest of the ship."  He nodded and took Vorik's place at the entrance to the Jefferies Tube. 

Janeway moved back to the charred ruins of her command platform where Chakotay was standing.

"Well, it looks like we won't have to worry about boarders just yet.  Let's get this ship moving, just as fast as we can, and find a place to hole up and finish repairs."

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

Hours later it was becoming increasingly obvious that the ship was not likely to start moving any time soon.  They had no warp core, and no ODN connections to either nacelle.  Impulse engines would take days to rebuild and no commands or power were getting through to the thruster interfaces.  All of the data connections leading into the main computer core were lumps of useless carbon, and every time they managed to get the secondary processor up and running it lasted for maybe an hour, then reported a fatal flaw and powered down again. 

Infuriatingly, in the midst of all this havoc, some of the less important systems had been much easier to restore, particularly those which had processors that could run independently of the main brain of the ship.

"Tubolifts are back," Chakotay reported, looking grimy and dishevelled as he reported to the Captain for the third time that hour.  "But B'Elanna says we're going to have to replace nearly every power and data relay on the ship.  We've reached the forward sections of deck eight.  Final casualty count isn't in, but no fatalities have been reported."

That was always on the back of a captain's mind whenever they took their ship into combat, and the relief was welcome.  "That's the first good news I've heard in hours."

"You look exhausted," he commented, in a voice quiet enough that it didn't carry to anyone but her.

"We're all going to get a lot more tired before this is over," she replied.  It was true that the stimulant she'd dosed herself with earlier was wearing off, and she was starting to get the shakes.

They stood in companionable silence for a few moments.

"Funny how things turn out, isn't it?"  remarked Chakotay in a mild tone.

"In what way?"  she asked him, casting her mind about to find anything even remotely amusing in their present predicament.

"If you hadn't pulled Paris off bridge duty, he would have been here, with us.  He would have been trapped with the rest of us."

"And Voyager would now be being carved up for scrap?"  That thought had occurred to her already.

"Most likely.   Can I be generous and call it Captain's instinct?"

"You could, but you'd be dead wrong."

"Then can I call it Captain's luck."

"Somebody's luck.  I'm not sure whose."  She stopped talking but Chakotay knew she had been going to say something else and decided against it at the last second.

"Yes?" he prompted.

"Let's just say I'm re-evaluating.  We'll talk about it later."  But also nagging away at the back of her mind was the thought that had occurred to her in the thick of the battle.  If Paris had been at the helm, they might have avoided that last hit, although she admitted to herself that it was unlikely; just like the Delta Flyer earlier in the day, whatever it was they ended up colliding with hadn’t shown up on sensors.  Had the enemy ships deployed whatever it was during the battle, like a torpedo, or was the whole of this system littered with them, like a minefield.  Perhaps it had been the encounter with the Delta Flyer which had alerted the patrol to come looking for them.  She had more questions than answers and that was not a comfortable position for a Starship Captain to be in while crossing hostile territory. 

There was something else nagging at her too; the pain from her ankle, which had been gradually growing from a dull ache at the back of her mind to a persistent throbbing and now chose this moment to shock her with a sharp tearing sensation.  She couldn't ignore it any longer.   Not wanting to take anyone's attention away from vital repair work, she limped down to Sickbay without assistance.

She paused at the door to sickbay, taking in the scene.  It was one of devastation.  Moving bodies in varying stages of dilapidation were littered all over the floor and spilled out into the corridor.  Blood of various hues was spattered over almost every surface, and the whine of instruments and rustle of movement was punctuated by the continuous background groans of people in pain, waiting to be seen.   

The doctor was working feverishly away over in the surgical bay, with Seven assisting him, fielding the instruments he was handing off to her smoothly and quickly.   Tom Paris was working on a patient on the middle of the three (nominally non-critical) bio beds, his movements confident and practised, being assisted by one of the three other emergency medical assistants.  The other two assistants were each working on their own patients, on the beds on either side.  They were treating head wounds, burns and fractures, and it seemed to be Paris, rather than the Doctor, who was supervising them.  Both Paris and the Doctor were islands of calm in the turbulent biological sea that boiled around them, and the other assistants, all of whom looked a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they were being asked to cope with, were taking their cue from the two of them.   Neither the doctor nor Paris noticed the Captain standing at the door; both were utterly focussed on their patients.   She had almost forgotten her own injury in the face of so much visible suffering.   She watched her two senior medical staff instead, observed the smooth way sickbay operated even under such terrible conditions. 

"Tom," the doctor said, "I need you to finish this nerve reconstruction for me, that cranial bleed can't wait.   How are you doing with that lung?"

"I need another minute."

"Don't make it any longer."

Both voices were preternaturally calm.  

"I've finished," Ensign Stewart reported from the bio bed to Paris' left. 

"Good," Paris told her without looking up from what he was doing.  "There's Nicoletti over by the office, d'you want to get her up next?"   He tossed the instrument he had been using at his assistant with a quick smile and an air of completion, and darted round to check the readings on his biobed.  Apparently satisfied with a quick review, he moved right to check the next patient, and then left to help Stewart settle her new patient and check her over with a tricorder to be sure he hadn't missed anything in the triage.  Giving both Sue Nicoletti and Stewart encouraging pats, he headed for the main surgical bay where the doctor was working, pausing to re-sterilise his hands before taking the doctor's place at the left side of the surgical bed and acquainting himself with the readings showing on the sensor dome currently closed over the bed.   As soon as he arrived, the doctor hurried away without a backward glance to a man with a face covered in blood lying on a makeshift table near the door to his office.   Janeway couldn't place him immediately due to the angle at which he was lying and all the gunk on his face.

The re shuffle complete, comparative quiet descended once again.

 

Janeway's sense of surprise was growing by the second.  She had been aware from the doctor's recent reports that he was satisfied with the progress of all of his makeshift medical team, but to watch him hand over what was obviously a fairly complicated procedure to Paris, not a qualified doctor, and then trust him to complete it unsupervised, and furthermore, to trust him with basic supervision of the other medical personnel while he carried out surgery...  something very profound had changed between them.   She found that watching the two of them work together had lifted her spirits after the emotional battering of the battle.  Her adrenaline levels now leaking away, she lost track of time.

Bad as the situation was, it was obviously the tail end of the rush, as more patients were leaving sickbay than were arriving.  Through the other entrance to the doctor's little office, in the back room which was normally used as a laboratory, Neelix and Sam Wildman were treating superficial burns, contusions and other simple injuries, and there was a steady trickle of patients leaving through the lab door to go back to their duties.

It wasn't until some minutes later when the Doctor stood up from where he had been crouching over his 'cranial bleed' and dismissed the patient via the orderly into the recovery area, that his focus widened enough to take in the rest of Sickbay, and more particularly, the door.

"Oh, Captain, I didn't notice you there.," the Doctor exclaimed, hastening towards her, "You're injured!"

"It's my ankle, but I don't think it's serious."

The Doctor helped her over to the nearest biobed, which had just been vacated by one of B'Elanna's engineering staff.

"Mr Paris?" The Doctor called, and Paris, who had just been taking a final look at the readouts on the diagnostic arch, having finished with his patient a few seconds later than the doctor, looked up.  His expression, decided Janeway, was not completely welcoming.  Surprised and a little alarmed might have been a better description. 

"Your attention here please," the doctor ordered, with an insufferably smug smirk.  Paris turned his attention onto the doctor, and his mouth twitched a little with what might have been annoyance, or it might have been barely suppressed amusement.  He obediently left the surgical bay and came over to stand by the biobed, his hands linked behind his back, his stance that of the perfect student.  He had a grave and attentive expression on his face, but there was a definite twinkle in his eyes.

"Mr Paris, what is the first rule of diagnosis?"

"Ears first, then eyes, then hands."  He intoned as though he'd heard it a thousand times.

"Well, you better take a look at that ankle and tell me what's wrong."

He looked up at Janeway, making direct eye contact with her for the first time in what felt like weeks.  “where does it hurt?”

“I’m tempted to say everywhere, but…”  she indicated the worst bit.

It took him a moment to find the right implement to create a long slit down the side of her boot.  Gentle hands eased the destroyed boot off her foot, causing her only a minimum of discomfort.  She watched him as his fingers explored the injury, his face intent and focussed.

"It's not broken..." he murmured.

"Are you sure?"  The Doctor challenged.

"Fairly.  The joint is out of alignment, though.  My best guess would be tearing of the internal lateral ligament, exacerbated by the fact that it's been several hours since it happened."

"Extent?"

"I'm not sure but judging by the amount the ankle's out of alignment, nearly complete."  He glanced up at the captain, frowning.  "How did you walk on this?  What kind of pain killers are you on?"

"The boot will have acted as a temporary restraint," the Doctor reminded him. "What's the treatment?"

Paris' reply was swift and confident, "block the nerve, manipulate the joint back into place, reseal the ligaments and apply a firm lateral restraint."

The Doctor handed his student a tricorder.  "Check your diagnosis."

Paris took the readings, read them himself, then handed the instrument to the Doctor with an air of satisfaction.

"Well get on with it then, the Captain's a very busy woman."

That he was expected to perform the procedure as well as the diagnosis obviously made him uneasy.

"Doctor, don't you think..."

"...and never show any doubt in your own abilities in front of the patient."

 

By now, Janeway had twigged that this was a show for her benefit, and she would far rather have had the Doctor himself treat her, for a variety of reasons too complex to unravel quickly, but she hesitated to say anything.  Given the conversations she'd had with both the doctor and Chakotay just before the battle started, she was aware that it would sound horribly prejudiced to refuse to be treated by a man whose faith in her had clearly been shattered by her recent behaviour towards him.

Tom had quickly overcome his reluctance and commenced treatment of her ankle, proceeding without any further prompting from the doctor, who kept a sharp eye on his student's work, standing close by.  Once Tom had blocked the nerves feeding her ankle, she couldn't feel his hands as they lifted and slid the bones back into alignment, nor could she feel the sharp grinding sensation that had been growing worse as the medication she had administered on the bridge wore off.  He was concentrating solely on the foot alone; he had forgotten that it was the Captain he was working on and now seemed entirely consumed by the intricacies of the task itself.  She watched his face, and the proud expression on the face of the Doctor as he also observed his student, and then she noticed that the Doctor's hand was resting reassuringly on Paris' shoulder.   Seeing that made her experience a sudden jolt of something it took her a few moments to identify as jealousy.  That was her gesture; the doctor had no business....

She almost laughed out loud, but it would have been a bitter laugh.  Did she really think he would wait, moping after her attentions forever?  He had found another mentor and she - she had lost him.


	7. Chapter 7

Janeway escaped sickbay just as soon as she could, her thoughts and feelings in turmoil.  The bridge was in chaos, she couldn't hear herself think.  She stood it for ten minutes then, tired, aching and in desperate need of some strong coffee, which she couldn't have because the replicators were off line, she retreated to her quarters, feeling very like a wild animal returning to its den to lick its wounds.  She knew B'Elanna and her other officers were perfectly capable of organising the repair work without her and although she would normally get involved with the engineering work herself, what she most needed to do was think.

The confrontation between herself and the Doctor earlier that day had buried itself into her memory with the intensity normally only reserved for life altering events, and the implications had been churning about in the back of her mind continuously ever since - even in the thick of battle.

She knew she was a forceful personality.  It was one of the things which had got her through Starfleet Academy and landed her the posting on the Al-Batani, where Captain Owen Paris had positively encouraged the trait.  But there, she'd always been careful not to overstep the mark of what was reasonable for a newly graduated officer.  Since getting her own command, she'd allowed that aspect of her personality pretty much free rein.  She'd become accustomed to her willpower dominating all around her and given the circumstances, and the fact that she rarely got an argument from anyone - had she given the impression that she believed she really did have the power of life and death over her 150 crew?  The realisation that Tom Paris was living in fear of her, that he had come to believe himself no better than a slave on board ship, existing with the uncertainty and helplessness that no one but another slave could understand; that realisation made her feel physically sick.  And if him, how many others had come to the same conclusions over the years?  Was she presiding over a crew who were simply too scared to tell her when she crossed the line and moved from leader to despot? 

More importantly, WHY had she not noticed?  She’d chosen Paris to be part of the rescue mission for Seven when she’d been captured by the Borg Queen, surely that demonstrated her trust in his skills?  Of course, he’d been under her eye the entire time except for those critical few minutes when the rest of the team went in to rescue Seven, and he’d carried out his orders absolutely and to the letter.  Looking back, she’d barely exchanged two words with him the entire mission, and he hadn’t said a word to anyone outside of normal duty interactions.  He’d been very quiet but then she’d been so preoccupied with Seven’s predicament and so worried about the danger of the mission and the very real probability of them all getting caught and assimilated that she hadn’t exactly been chatty herself.  And she hadn’t exactly given Paris the choice to be on the mission either.  She hadn’t asked for volunteers, just picked her team and assumed they would speak up if they were uncomfortable with it.  She’d been so consumed with worry for Seven that she assumed everyone would feel the same.  What if they simply hadn’t said anything because they’d felt there was no use? 

The truth was, she’d railroaded the lot of them and embarked on what was very close to a suicide mission without taking anyone else’s feelings or opinions into account.  For a moment, she wondered if she would have done the same if it had been anyone else but Seven and she knew instinctively that the answer was ‘no’.  Rationally, there would have been no point because anyone else would have been instantly assimilated and disappeared forever into the vast Borg Collective, unknowing and untraceable.  There had been no reason to believe that any different fate would have befallen Seven, and yet she had assumed that that wouldn’t happen.  Assumed, or simply blinded by hope?  She honestly didn’t know which, just that Seven was like a daughter to her and she’d been consumed with her need to get her back.  And she’d carried everyone else along for the ride, using her authority as Captain to indulge her emotions, and not caring about the potential danger to the other members of the crew.   Despite all that, despite the fact that Paris had (unknown to her) been deep in a depression at the time, his performance, what she remembered of it, had been absolutely exemplary.  She hadn’t told him that, in fact had barely spoken to him since.  She hadn’t congratulated any of them on the outcome of that mission, didn’t praise them nearly enough.  She had to make an effort to do that more often.  She had to pay more attention to their needs and emotions, that was part of the function of a Captain and as this journey had dragged on she’d been doing that less and less.  Perhaps now was a good time to give herself a good mental kicking and resolve to change her ways. 

Her anger with Paris had suppressed her normal tendency to look for blame in herself first and anyone else second.  But the characteristic was too deeply entrenched to remain suppressed for long.  She now accepted within her private thoughts that part of the blame for his actions on Monea lay squarely with her.  She had known what he was like, she had known how he was feeling.  If she had found something else constructive with which to occupy him in those critical few hours after the meeting with the Moneans and before their scheduled departure, it would never have happened. 

Paris would never be the kind of officer that Starfleet wanted him to be - or rather, he would never be the kind of officer that most people - including himself - believed Starfleet wanted him to be.   People like Paris were very high maintenance, and in times of peaceful routine they could be an actual liability to a close quarters Starship community.  But in a crisis, he could make the difference between life and death.  She had forgotten that.  You could point him at a problem, define parameters, let him loose on it, and then forget all about it until he came back with the problem solved.

On a purely intellectual level, Kim had the same or probably greater technical flare for problem solving, as did Torres.  But where Paris was different, where he was exceptional, was that he combined his intelligence and creativity with a fine tactical mind and an ability to think on his feet in an unfamiliar environment.  The worse the situation you threw him into, the better he was likely to respond.  The problem was that such characteristics nearly always went hand in hand with a very individualistic and highly-strung temperament and if you wanted the advantages of the former, you had to accept that it was necessary to manage the latter.  That, she had failed to do.  Manage it, not smother it.  Not try to make him like any other soldier, brainwashed into mindless obedience.

Today had been an object lesson in the advantages which arose when Paris was free to 'do his own thing' in a crisis situation.  What was both annoying and reassuring was that he had not considered his actions to be anything out of the ordinary.  He had simply responded to a situation, solved a problem, and then gone back to Sickbay and got on with patching up the wounded as if nothing else had been on his mind all day.

The Doctor was right.  Her loss of trust in him had caused her to treat him in exactly the wrong way.  She should have been pushing him harder, challenging him more, not overloading him with routine drudgery or leaving him to coast.  He would only find other ways to keep that acute brain of his active, even if that meant developing an interest in medicine.   Did she really want to find out what the natural successor to Captain Proton might be?  She smiled to herself, remembering one of the few hours in the last few months in which she had experienced true enjoyment.  No, a profusion of new holodeck programs would not be the worst thing that could happen.

The truth was, the bridge felt like it had a gaping hole in it when he wasn't there.  A great, yawning chasm in front of her where the conn station should be; it didn't matter who sat in that chair or how good they were.  The particular spark that Tom had always provided by his cheerful and enthusiastic presence had been missing for too long now.  In fact, it had been missing long before she had taken him off bridge duty.  Looking back, she could see that he hadn't been the same since she had demoted him.  The realisation hit her with a dull surprise because she hadn't expected him to be that sensitive.  She had tried to convince herself that nothing had really changed following his loss of rank, but she knew that wasn't true.  How could it help but change when he was now lower in rank than several people who reported to him? 

She knew she was being a coward, running away from sickbay like that.  All her life, she had been taught to face her problems head on, but she'd only rarely had to apologise, and she knew she wasn't that good at it.  But she also knew that she'd get no peace until she went back to sickbay and at least made an attempt to open a dialogue.

 

Sickbay was dark and nearly deserted as she entered.  All patients had gone except for the couple still recovering from major operations who were lying unconscious on bio beds.  The doctor was pottering around tidying up the surgical bay, and at the desk in the doctor's office, Tom Paris was slumped with his head resting on his arms, flattened by exhaustion.  It was clear there was going to be no talking to him any time soon.

"Ah, Captain, how's the ankle?"  The Doctor emerged from the lab behind his office, smiling in welcome.

"It's good as new, I think," she decided, wriggling it experimentally and finding no adverse effects from the movement.   "Your assistant appears to have done an excellent job."

"Naturally, since I trained him."

"Let's leave your ego out of this.  I came down to talk about Tom."  This was not completely true, but it seemed like a good first step, given that the Doctor clearly saw himself as a defender and advocate.

The doctor glanced over towards his sleeping assistant, "Computer, erect an acoustic suppression field across the doorway to the Doctor's office."

There was a brief flare and the doctor turned back to Janeway, "Now we can talk without waking him up."

"He's had a busy day," she commented.

They still spoke in hushed voices, in deference to the other occupants of the room.

"Sometimes I forget he isn't a perpetual motion hologram like me.  He drives himself into exhaustion, like someone else I could mention.  What is it about Starfleet brats that makes them feel the need to push themselves so relentlessly, Captain?" 

Janeway had asked herself that question many times in the past and had never come up with an answer she found satisfactory.   "People are told from a very early age that they have to be exceptional to have even a small chance of making it into Starfleet academy.  I think if you're born into a fleet family that pressure is with you from the start.  You feel it from the moment you understand what Starfleet is."

"It's not healthy.  It doesn't make healthy, balanced people."

"It makes achievers.  And that's what Starfleet needs."

"It's what Starfleet thinks it needs.  An inflexible attitude makes inflexible people."

"Oh, I sense another lecture coming on, Doctor, and I sense it aimed at me."

"Have you had a chance, with all the excitement, to think about our discussion?"

Janeway hesitated before she answered.  It was very tempting to say no, to claim that she'd simply been too busy dealing with the most serious crisis they'd had in months to even begin to think about the issue of one helmsman's sensibilities, but it would have been a lie. 

"He seems to have settled well into his medical studies," she observed.  It wasn't quite an answer to his question, but it did signify, she hoped, a sea change in her opinions.

The doctor's eyes lit up with enthusiasm, "Now, yes.  I made the mistake of trying to treat him like Kes.  He's not another Kes, he learns in a completely different way."

Janeway recalled the log she had looked up before coming down to sickbay, and the list of programs that Tom Paris had been running recently.

"You've been spending a lot of time in the holodecks, I understand."

"Simulations are an efficient tool for teaching, especially someone like Mr Paris, who responds to situations better than words."

"I reviewed some of your programs earlier this evening.  Some of them seem a little - non standard."

"I've been taking advantage of Mr Paris' fascination with history."

"In what way?  You've picked some strange periods."

The Doctor took the bit and ran with it.  She had obviously touched on what had become one of his favourite subjects.  "Of course he's got to be able to interpret a tricorder and use all the modern equipment.   In the field, in an emergency, a medic is likely to be left without any diagnostic or treatment aids.  I want Paris to be able to use his own senses to make a diagnosis, to be able to treat patients under the most primitive conditions, at least enough to keep them alive.  The knowledge has to be in his head and his hands and senses, not in a tricorder.  He has to know how to keep complex bio-mechanical systems running without sophisticated drugs or force fields."

"Did you train Kes this way?"  Janeway couldn't quite imagine the Doctor throwing his elfin little ex-assistant into a holographic simulation of a Roman invasion.  Of course, Kes had always been much tougher than she looked, quietly determined and very committed, but there had always been that air of, if not fragility, certainly a kind of naivete about her.

"Kes was really more of a second doctor on site.  Paris now, he wouldn't flinch from hacking someone's limb off without anaesthetic, in an emergency, to keep them alive.  Kes probably would have as well, but I could never bear to put her to the test, and she certainly wasn't as physically strong as Paris, which limited what she could do.   I know I can send Paris out into battle conditions and be sure I'll get the maximum number of live patients back, in the proper order for treatment."

Janeway perched herself on the edge of the nearest bio-bed, making yet another mental adjustment.  "This is quite a change.  A year ago, it seemed like an ongoing battle between the two of you."

"It was.  I can see now that I wanted Kes back, and I think I was punishing Mr Paris for not being Kes, for not being able to fill her shoes.  She was the best friend I had; a companion and a colleague," he paused, and an affectionate, rather nostalgic expression passed across his face.  "But then, Tom has proved to be quite a challenging companion.  I would miss him if he weren't here."

She asked the question she'd been dreading.  "Doctor - do you want Mr Paris as a permanent assistant?"

She expected him to say yes, to jump at the chance, and was surprised when he hesitated for several seconds, and continued in a less than certain tone of voice.

"If I thought it was genuinely what he wanted, I would be pleased to accept Mr Paris as my official second.  But I'm not sure that Paris really knows what he wants at the moment, let alone what is best for him. But I do know he doesn't want someone else to make those decisions for him."

"How long would it take to actually qualify him as a doctor?" she asked.

The Doctor shook his head, looking doubtful, but the answer came so quickly and so smoothly that she got the impression it was something he'd already spent considerable time thinking about.  "The Starfleet Academy medical course is eight years of gruelling full time study."

"Four of which includes the standard cadet course, which he has already graduated," she reminded him, although again, she got the impression he didn't need reminding but had been putting up a negative façade for her benefit.  "Then there's his background in biochemistry, which must add a few more credits.  And he's been working with you for - eighteen months now?"

"On a strictly part time basis, Captain.  Mr Paris' designation is still Command, not Life Sciences."

"Would it surprise you to know that he requested a permanent re-assignment to Sickbay two weeks ago, which I denied?"

"I knew about it.  Captain, since - the trouble, the sickbay has been the only place he's felt comfortable.  You may not know this, because he hides it well, but his self-esteem took a serious blow, more serious than I think any of you realise.  Working with me has helped to restore some of his self-confidence."

"Self-confidence I took away," she admitted, to him and to herself.   "But I didn't have any choice, Doctor."

"Yes you did."

"Not you too...."

"I don't pretend to be an expert on command matters, Captain.  But I can recognise a personal issue when I see one.  Sooner or later the two of you are going to have to sit down and talk like human beings; or else it's going to be a very miserable trip home for the both of you, not to mention everyone else."

"Everyone else?"

"This is an unhappy ship at the moment.  You hadn't noticed?  You're both important for morale, and to see you at odds with each other has unsettled more of the crew than you might realise."

Janeway sat back, her shoulders sagging. 

"Chakotay's been trying to tell me the same thing for weeks.   But what else could I have done, Doctor?  His behaviour was outrageous, I couldn't let him believe he could take the law into his own hands."

"I've got to admit, when Mr Paris does something, he does it spectacularly.  But what you managed to do is convince him that he had no power of self-determination at all, over anything. Tom's much more sensitive about having the freedom to choose than anyone else I've ever encountered.  It's as if his early life was spent fighting for that freedom and now he's hypersensitive about anyone trying to take it away.  There's no greater stress that Tom could experience.  And he has been stressed, Captain.  Heavily." 

"I'm beginning to see that, and I'm beginning to see that I'm very much responsible for it."

"You lost faith in him, he lost faith in everything, including himself.  Not a totally even exchange.  Fortunately, it hasn't affected his medical judgement, which is getting better all the time."

The two of them turned to look over towards the Doctor's office, and the sleeping face they could just see through the window.

"To answer your question, Captain, he'd be a very fine doctor.  He's got the compassion and the intelligence.  But it's not what he was born to do, and I know it as well as you do."

A part of her that had been coiled in tension ever since she had realised this conversation was inevitable, relaxed.  She sent a silent thank you to the geniuses who had programmed the EMH's matrix, to enable it to grow and become adaptive and sensitive.  If he had said that he had wanted Paris, it would have been hard to justify refusing to grant Paris' request in any terms other than sheer vindictiveness, and she'd already played that card too many times.

She smiled, allowing herself to experience a moment of nostalgia, and allowing herself for the first time to share a long-held memory. "When I was a young officer on the Al-Batani, I used to look at the picture on Captain Paris' desk.  It was of a young boy, very blond, big dark eyes.  I used to think he was just the kind of child I'd want myself.  Meeting Tom for the first time in a penal colony in New Zealand more than ten years later, I couldn't reconcile the picture of that angelic little mite with the wary-eyed suspicious giant loping along beside me in the colony park."  She sighed heavily.  "People tend to think captains have the answer to everything.  Three years ago, if you'd have asked me, I'd have said he would be a Lieutenant Commander in five years.   Where did we go wrong?  Where did I go wrong?"

"You didn't promote him."

She shook her head, denying his logic.  "That's a simplistic argument.  As much as he's done for the ship, there was never a time I felt comfortable rewarding his - inconsistency."  She realised she'd used the wrong word.  "That's not right.  He's not inconsistent.  He's actually very consistent, he's just…" finding the right description was a struggle, "…a little out of left field."

The Doctor seemed to find that amusing.  "I wonder if anyone ever said that about you."

She realised that he was right.  There might well have been people who had said similar things about her during her academy years and in the early years afterwards when she was growing and learning her own strengths and eager to prove herself.  "I was originally a science officer.  It was Owen Paris who persuaded me to change to command. My life has been bound up with the Paris family since before I graduated Academy.  I've wanted so much more for Tom than he's seemed to want for himself.  I suppose I have been - frustrated - by his refusal to live up to the potential I imagined for him."

The Doctor's expression was an odd mixture of nostalgia and affection.  "I had no idea how fast he could learn, because he'd never shown me.  The day I got him on my side was the day I finally told him that I admired him and cared about him.  He made me realise I didn't know the difference between banter and insult, at least where he was concerned.  Captain, I've only recently come to understand that in some ways he's quite fragile.  In other ways, he's incredibly strong.  The mix is just - different from everyone else on board." 

She nodded, seeing that he understood the root cause of her recent failure.  "Command school taught me to work to peoples' strengths and find ways to compensate for their weaknesses.  But Starfleet cadets seem to fall within a reasonably narrow band of strengths and weaknesses.  Only certain kinds of either are acceptable."

"Starfleet cadets are trained to accept a certain kind of learning regime, Captain, and from what I've observed it tends to be negative in many respects.  Tom responds well to positive motivation.  He responds badly to negative motivation.  That's just a fact of life, and you're not going to change it.  I would guess that has to do with his father, who seems to have been a fairly negative character where his son was concerned."

"Say demanding rather than negative.  But perhaps you're right.  Admiral Paris had a reputation at the Academy for utilising the stick more than the carrot.  He wasn't the only one.  B'Elanna left because of the same kind of attitude."

"Starfleet's not perfect, Captain.  It's a monolith.  It resists change, like all monoliths.  Every now and then, someone has to come along and shake it up, or it would be in danger of turning into something - quite unpleasant."

She nodded.  "The signs were there before we left.  People like B'Elanna shouldn't be washed out of Academy.  Paris knew how to play the game, so he made it through, but it didn't make him a good officer.  He should have come out of those four years with all his childhood issues resolved.  If the son of an Admiral can fall through the cracks, how many other potentially fine officers are being let down?  How many of my own officers, on this ship?  You know, Doctor, I've never really thought about it.  When I think of the Academy, I think of fine products like Harry Kim, Sue Nicoletti, Vorik, Tuvok."

"As a captain, you would only usually see the ones the system didn't let down.  The Parises and B'Elannas wouldn't be on a normal Starfleet ship."

"That is Starfleet's loss.  But they are hard work, Doctor."

"Worthwhile things usually are, aren't they?"

She nodded her agreement.

"Talk to him, Captain.  Treat him like a human being, and not like a failed experiment.  I think he still has the capacity to surprise you, if you let him."

She walked to the transparent partition separating her from the interior of the doctors' office, and looked down at the sleeping face.

"I will," she promised.


	8. Chapter 8

 

Striding away from sickbay a few minutes later, she felt re-vitalised, as if something she and the doctor had discussed had imbued her with a new sense of purpose.  Or perhaps it was a sense of hope.  So, her ship was devastated and falling apart at the seams?  She could deal with that; they'd rebuilt whole sections of the ship numerous times during their five years in the Delta Quadrant.  Rebuilding a friendship; a relationship built on trust and admiration and respect, that had seemed a much more difficult task, one she had been afraid to attempt.  Now she was aware that she did want to attempt it, and for the first time in months, she had hope that it might be possible.

She found Chakotay still on the bridge, still co-ordinating, still gathering information from various parts of the ship.  He looked even more grimy than when she'd left him, and for the first time she noticed that he was also a little singed around the edges.

"Vorik and Culhane just got back with the Warp Core," he reported to her as soon as she stepped onto the bridge.  "It'll probably be twelve hours before we can re-install it, and even then we won't have warp power for days."

She nodded.  "It's time we took stock.  We're pecking away at this situation like birds in a corn field.  I want all the senior department heads assembled in the briefing room in thirty minutes."

"Yes Captain.  Er, about..."  Chakotay didn't get a chance to ask, she knew what he was going to say and exasperation prompted her to jump in with the answer.

"Yes!  He's included too!"

She didn't have to look back to know that she'd left him grinning widely.

 

 

 

Paris was surprised to be roused by the Doctor and told he was wanted at a conference in twenty five minutes.

"Chakotay says the Captain wants to brainstorm the current situation and she wants you there.  Apparently your earlier creativity created something of an impression.  Maybe she's looking for an encore." 

"She's not going to get much on twenty minutes' notice," he replied, yawning and rubbing his neck to get the kinks out of it.  He made a mental note not to go to sleep draped over the doctor's office terminal again. 

The doctor left him to wake up and he used the quiet to think back.  Somewhere between his piloting the shuttle and his last patient, there had been an idea flirting around the edge of his consciousness, something sparked off by his original idea of using the Delta Flyer's power source to 'jump start' some of Voyager's systems.  He often found the creative workarounds necessitated by 20th century technological limitations to be a source of inspiration.  They were so spoilt in the 24th century, with their artificial gravity and replicators and subspace field generators.  Sometimes, getting back to basics meant dropping Cochrane or Daystrom or even Einstein, and looking at a problem from a more simplistic point of view.  What did you do in the 20th century if you couldn't jump start a car?

Of course!  But would it work?  Aware that he had minutes before he had to head up to deck one, he pulled the doctor's terminal towards him and accessed Voyager's technical specifications.

With five minutes or slightly less to spare, Paris, head brimming with ideas, left sickbay and headed down the corridor to catch the turbolift.  He looked up as the turbolift door opened to find B'Elanna Torres already in the car.  This was a shock and a distraction; the grandiose plans he'd been working on to get Voyager up and running flew out of his head, to be filled yet again with apprehension and self-doubt. She looked as dismayed to see him as he was to see her.  They hadn't spoken to each other for weeks, except as protocol demanded and then in cool, detached tones, not usually face to face.  For a split second he debated waiting for another car, then decided he was being foolish and stepped inside.  "Deck One," 

The doors closed and a heavy silence enclosed them.

They had been here before, more than once.  Some of their more complicated emotional transactions had been conducted inside a turbo lift.  Right now, Paris simply couldn't think of the right words to initiate conversation.  He couldn't even look at her.  Things had gone so horribly wrong between them and he could feel the ice in the air.

After a horrible pause, B'Elanna finally said, "so, you saved the ship again."

He shrugged, "sorry."

"What?"

Paris flinched, sensing an imminent explosion, "I meant..."

"...I was trying to congratulate you, not..."

"Yeah, I figured that." 

They were silent again, and Paris figured he had nothing to lose now except some bone integrity.  Somebody had to say something.  He turned to face her directly.  

"Look, I'm sorry about the thing with the report."

"I'm sorry too," she admitted, not meeting his eyes.

The atmosphere thawed just a little.

"It had just been one hell of a day..." he added, after a few more seconds.

"I know."

"And that thing with Kim, it kinda made me over react."

She shook her head, seeming anxious to be conciliatory, "no, I was out of line to push it."

"Can we at least be friends?" he asked, still feeling some apprehension about her answer.  

B'Elanna's smile blossomed.  "You know, when a woman says that to a man, it usually means, 'I wouldn't sleep with you on a bet'."

"I was just thinking..."

"I know.   But we were good together sometimes, weren't we?"

The ice had gone completely, and both of them knew it.  He took her hand, caressed it with his own.  "We were always good together.  I guess we knew for quite a while we weren't exactly gonna settle down."

A decisive look crossed her face, and she ordered the computer to halt the turbolift.  He smiled.  That was normally his job in these situations.

"Tom, we'd stopped - really talking a long time before all this, hadn't we?"  She sounded like she'd wanted to get that off her chest for a long time, and was relieved that the words were in the open between them at last. 

He didn't dispute her.

"I guess we had."

"I think it's time to stop blaming ourselves - and each other," he knew she meant herself, "for something that just wasn't meant to be.  I love you, Tom, but - not that way.  You're one of my very best friends, you've made me a much better person, and you're terrific in bed, or on the floor.  Or in the shower," her face took on a slightly teasing expression, then sobered again.  "You made me believe that people could care for me, that I was worth caring for.  But you're looking for something I can't give you.  I don't want to stand in your way when you find it.  And I… I haven't felt we've been all that good for each other recently.  I mean, since before all this started."

"Maybe we should just step back a bit," Paris suggested.

"Give each other some space, see what happens?"

"Something like that."

"Isn't that pretty much what we have been doing for the last few weeks?"

"Why don't we just accept that we've been trying to live up to other people's perceptions, and not try anymore," Paris suggested.  "I mean, we've never been…" he searched for a famous pairing to illustrate his point, "Tristan and Isolde."

"Romeo and Juliet," she contributed, smiling broadly now.

"Starsky and Hutch."

Her face creased into a perplexed frown.  "Who?"

He waved it away.  It required a week's answer, or none.  "Never mind.  My point is, we've always been better as friends.  I don't want to lose that."

"Me neither."

"Then let's just - start again, and see where it leads us."

She squeezed his hand, hard.  "It's a deal.  Now, get this thing moving, or we're going to be late for the meeting."

 

Everyone else was assembled (some only just) when Janeway got to the briefing room and took her customary position at the head of the table.  She wasted no time in coming to the point.

"Right, people.  Let's sum up.  We have no warp engines.  We have no impulse engines.  We have no thrusters.  Life support is down on four decks, and the computer needs a substantial overhaul before we stop having to re-initialise it every ninety minutes.  Repair estimates are far from encouraging, and in no more than seven days, some very annoyed people are likely to show up and try to kill us again.  Ideas?"

There was a drawn out silence as everybody tried to magic up the solution that would get them out of this situation. 

"I was thinking..."

Tom Paris' voice sounded tentative and far more timid than she had ever heard it sound before.  She was about to tell him to go on when Chakotay beat her to it, sounding gentle and encouraging.

"Well - the Delta Flyer's power source is rated high enough to run Voyager's main deflector dish."

There was another silence as everyone tried to figure out what he was getting at.

"How does that help us?" Kim asked.

Paris warmed up to his explanation slightly and went into 'teaching' mode. "The deflector is designed to sweep space in front of the ship in an inverse parabolic shape and push out of the way any debris or particles that could harm the ship on impact.  It can clear space of pretty big rocks.  but if it was re-configured to project a more parallel beam, it could push something in front of it."

Tuvok caught on first.  "Are you suggesting we use the Delta Flyer to push Voyager to a different location?"

Paris shrugged, "Without worrying about subspace fields, it's just simple Newtonian Mechanics."

"An oversimplification," commented Tuvok, "but the theory is sound."

"It's not going to get us very far, very fast." Chakotay pointed out.

"But it will get her moving."  Having broken the idea and been encouraged by the fact that he hadn't been instantly shot down in flames, Paris warmed up to his explanation.  "The Delta Flyer's tractor beam isn't powerful enough to take a ship the size of Voyager on tow, but that's due to the limitations of the emitter, not the power source.  The Warp core can feed her plenty of juice, and with the bigger dish, we can get her up to a respectable sublight speed.  Which puts this system's planet within range."

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed B'Elanna, "You want to take the deflector dish off Voyager, somehow attach it to the Delta Flyer, which has no mounting for it, and then expect it to work well enough to be able to push a dead, 700,000 ton Starship across half a star system?"

"It's weightless," Paris reminded her, an unusually humble tone to his voice.

"But not mass-less!"

"But it's in a resistance-free environment."

"You're insane!  How the devil are we going to get the dish off?"

"According to the dish specs, a six person team should be able to disengage the dish from its moorings in three and a half hours."

That was what Janeway particularly liked about Paris; when he came up with what seemed like an outrageous idea, he did his homework before he presented it.  She reminded herself that without his persistence and drive, they would never have built the Delta Flyer.  But that was when he had been a lieutenant, with the status and confidence to make his ideas heard.

"Yeah, at McKinley or Utopia Planitia!"  B'Elanna continued the argument.

"Then double the time estimate, or triple it!"  Janeway broke in, effectively ending what was shaping up to be an unproductive quarrel.  "Is it possible, can we do it, more to the point, does anyone else have a better idea?"

"At a constant, one gee acceleration, simple mathematics would indicate that the system's 'M' class planet would be in range in just over three days," Tuvok suggested.

"And if we flip her halfway, before we start decelerating," Kim suggested, now becoming enthused by the idea, "We can save more energy on Voyager by deactivating the ships' artificial gravity grid.  We can arrange it so that there is a constant downward force against the floors all the way."

"If we take down the inertial dampers," B'Elanna pointed out.

Kim shrugged, looking triumphant.  "More energy saved."    

"But we'll need the landing systems on line when we get there, and minimal impulse power to make orbit insertion first," Paris reminded them.  "We can't possibly tractor her in onto a planet with an 'M' class atmosphere."

"B'Elanna, can you get landing systems on line in three days?"  Janeway asked her chief engineer, who was still looking sceptical about the entire idea.

"I haven't yet figured out how I'm going to attach the deflector dish to the Delta Flyer," B'Elanna told her.  "If we concentrate on those systems for the whole three days, yes, we should have landing systems back on line."

"And if we don't?"  asked Chakotay.  Eyes automatically turned to Paris.

"Er - " Paris looked suddenly nervous again and Janeway discovered she hated to see him like that, "the planet has a moon we can land her on.  It's quite small, smaller than earth's moon.  With three fixed emitter stations, we can guide her in on tractor beams." 

"In any case, we'll be a lot less easy to spot sitting on a big rock than hanging out in the middle of nowhere," Kim observed.

"If we can get her down on a good location on the planet, the rest of the repairs will be much easier and much faster," B'Elanna said.  "A lot of what we have to do is external, and the less spacesuit time, the better."

"And once she's down, we can take field emitters outside the ship and throw a screen around her that would make her very hard to detect from orbit," Chakotay contributed, his enthusiasm for the idea growing.

"With all due respect to Mr Paris' flying skills, I recommend evacuating all but essential personnel from the ship before we attempt this manoeuvre," Tuvok added, effectively pouring cold water on any unbridled enthusiasm before it could get out of hand. 

"I disagree," B'Elanna cut in.  "I can't spare anyone from the repair work if you want to have landing systems in three days.  I need more people, not less."

"We'll need the Delta Flyer and both shuttles to escort the ship, and we're still a long way out from the planet to launch the escape pods," Chakotay pointed out.  "I suggest we shuttle a few small teams, of ten or so each, down to the planet before we start, and evacuate the rest of the crew only just before we attempt the landing."

"That sounds sensible," Janeway agreed.  "Using both shuttles, we can get the teams down in a few hours.  Once we're in orbit and ready to try a landing, we can launch all the escape pods and have the crew down and safe before we put the ship down."  She took a deep breath, wondering what she was letting her ship in for.  "Well, we've got a plan, people.  Let's make it happen." 

Her staff started to stand and file out of the room. 

"Mr Paris, please stay."  He had already stood up to leave and remained where he was, poised, she thought, rather like a wild animal caught in a bright searchlight.  He didn't move, but didn't sit back down either.  She noticed that more than one person as they filed past Paris reached out to pat him or touch him in some way which indicated support.  It was an odd feeling, to know that so many people had been aware of something of which you had been totally oblivious, and a little unsettling besides to realise that her crew thought someone needed protecting from her.

Once they were alone, she tried to adjust her tone to convey an appropriate lack of approbation with just the right amount of casual humour.

"I would re-promote you for your exemplary performance today, but I'd only have to re-demote you for violating the temporal Prime Directive.  I do wish you'd stop playing snakes and ladders with your rank."

He tried to return her light remark in kind, she had to give him that, but his heart simply wasn't in it. 

"I'm a trial to you, Captain.  I apologise.  Would you like me to confine myself to quarters?  I could work on my new holo-novel for a while..."

"Don't you think you caused enough chaos with your Captain Proton program?"

"Oh, this is much better than Proton."

"I don't want to know," (that wasn't true). "I don't want anything to do with it.  I don't want to have to dress up in silly costumes," (that wasn't true either…she'd enjoyed being Arachnia, queen of the spider people, costume notwithstanding).  "I just want a quiet life with a continuous supply of good coffee.  Is that so much to ask?"

"No, Captain."

He was too quiet.  She didn't like it.  Challenge, spirit, was part of what made Paris Paris.  It made her feel ill to think that she might have broken that.  She dropped her attempt at lightness, it was time to say what she'd really stayed in here to say.

"Sit down, Tom," she commanded.  He hesitated for a moment, uncomfortable with the relaxing of formality that implied, but she quelled him with a look and he sank down into the chair opposite her, and rested his hands on the table, his spine rigid.

There was a silence.  A long one.  She could see he was struggling with the urge to fidget or at least say something, but the look on her face stopped him.   She wondered what he was thinking.

Appraising him closely, at least while conscious, for the first time in weeks, she could see what both Chakotay and the doctor had been trying to tell her.  His face was thin and had a pinched, slightly anxious look.  He positively avoided meeting her eyes with his own.  Now that it came to it, she didn't want to ask.  It occurred to her that she was afraid to hear the answer.

"Do you feel I've been treating you unfairly?"  She knew she would not need to elaborate further.  Both of them were only too well aware what she was talking about.

He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and closed it again, very deliberately.

"You have permission to speak freely," she persisted.   He didn't look as if he wanted it, but then some kind of resolve crossed his face and after a couple of moments, started to talk.   The first sentence or so was hesitant, "This probably sounds inappropriate and, I mean I know I'm just a subordinate, but…"  After that, he got into his stride, and it was plain that he had thought long and hard about this, that it must have been rehearsed and refined many times.  She wondered how often he'd lain awake at night, putting the words together, believing that he'd never get the chance to say them to her face.

"There's a place where Starfleet hierarchy stops and people have to start treating each other like equals, but that place doesn't seem to exist between you and me anymore.  Watching you sometimes, I'm not sure it exists between you and anyone."

That was a harsh indictment, and it hurt, but she kept her silence, refusing to let her reaction show on her face.  He continued, maintaining eye contact now that he'd got his words off the ground and was slightly more fluent in their delivery.

"You never did this with Seven, on the many times she defied you publicly.  You never did it with Tuvok, or Chakotay.  Just me.  After four years when I've done everything you've told me to, put my life on the line for the ship, and you personally, more times than I can count.  So I can't help feeling like I've been singled out." 

She held her tongue although she wanted to interrupt what he was saying; explain how much worse his actions had been than anything the other crewmembers he had mentioned had done, but something about the look on his face kept her quiet.   She had, after all, given him permission to speak freely.  She disciplined herself to hear him out.

"I don't dispute what I did was out of line or that I deserved to be punished, and I've never attempted to wriggle out of it."   He took a deep breath, and she could tell it took real courage for him to continue.  "But are you ever going to let it go?  Or have I offended you so much that I might just as well slit my throat and get it over with?"

He stopped, this time waiting for a reply.  She gave him one, trying to keep her tone steady and reasonable, although the stricken look on his face actually made her want to pull him to her and give him a good, maternal hug, which was something he seemed to need very badly at that point.   "You're saying that I took it too personally.  But how could I not have taken it personally?  Was it the demotion or the brig you thought was inappropriate?"

He smiled, an odd, ghostly sort of smile which meant the exact opposite, "I don't like being an Ensign, but I can live with it.  I can take jail, I've been in worse places, believe me.  That wasn't it at all.  It was the way you did it.  Going the parental route.  Talking about personal disappointment; trying to set yourself up in the place of my father.   You're not my parent.  You're my superior officer in a professional relationship, and I'm not a disobedient five year old."   His expression had hardened and she was extremely glad she hadn't given in to her impulse of a few moments before.  What she felt now was a complex mixture of surprise and shame.  For the first time she realised that that was exactly what she had done.

"Even if you were a personal friend of my father's - even if you might have had some maternal feelings for a young officer under your command; using that as a club to beat me with, just like my father did all the years I lived under his roof; that's not appropriate behaviour from a captain in Starfleet.  I know you've got a much tougher job than I've got on this ship, I know you bear responsibility for the lives and welfare of this entire crew, including me, but you crossed that line.”

Her internal perspective had shifted quite suddenly.

She had taken a very personal pride in watching him blossom, from a prickly, untrusting, tense and defensive product of the Federation penal system (enlightened as that was) into a poised, confident and capable officer with an easy, natural manner and a kind of courage that wasn't generated from any macho desire to show off or impress.  She should have realised long before now that she had started to watch him with the pride and pleasure she had always wanted his father to feel in him, and when finally he had let her down she had felt that betrayal not just on her own behalf but on behalf of his entire family.  She had acted like a Paris, just like the father had when the sweet little five year old had failed to live up to impossible expectations.  And she had been acting like a positively abusive parent ever since.  He was not her son, nor was he five years old.  Perhaps, after all, she'd managed to reconcile the little blond boy and the big loping giant just a little too well.

"The last five years are the only years of my life that I haven't felt suffocated under the weight of my father's expectations and disapproval.   By doing what you did, you took that away from me. You brought that feeling back.  I'd got used to being without it, and it threw me.  I couldn't cope."

Something must have shown on her face because his tone abruptly changed, became softer and more conciliatory.  

"Okay, so maybe I had to face it sooner or later.  You gave me thirty days when I had nothing to do but sit and think.  Even in Auckland, I had stuff to do, I didn't have to think.  I started to discover just how deep those feelings ran.  I'm damaged goods, Captain, and that thinking time made me face up to it.  I'd been fooling myself for the last few years that after everything that had happened I could just be the person I wanted to be and leave the rest of me behind.  Six months ago, my record here was good enough that I had a choice.  I'd never have been more than a Lieutenant but that was more than most people thought I deserved anyway.  I had a second chance and I blew it.  Me, not anybody else.  I've no one to blame but myself.  Even if you were to give me a third chance, Starfleet won't.  And now I've tasted what life is like as the senior officer, chief conn officer on a Starship, nothing else, no other life, will ever be the same."

Having opened the floodgates, he didn't seem to be able to stop.

"I'm going to make the most of it while I can because when we get back to the Federation, my Starfleet career is over.  I'm going to have to turn my back on all of that and walk away.  Once they read the record of my demotion, that will be it, they won't ever forget it and they won't let it go.   I'm now a mutineer and a terrorist as well as a traitor and a liar and a coward.  D'you really believe that anyone but you will ever allow me to sit at the helm of their ship after all that?"

His face was composed and calm, his voice even and matter of fact, but she sensed an immense, tearing pain underneath it all, as well as a fatalistic acceptance that his life would never be as he wanted it to be.  It broke her heart, and she realised that her anger with him was finally gone, burned away by time and now, by understanding.

"What happened doesn't alter the fact that the life I have now, on Voyager, is still better than the life I had back in the Alpha quadrant.  I have friends here, people who actually care about me.  Me, not the name or the pedigree, or my father and his expectations.  

"I don't think I ever realised how deeply you felt about your father," she admitted.

"He was your commanding officer.  You respected him, you probably even liked him.   But believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to be his son, especially his only son."

She asked the question, not sure if he would be prepared to give her an answer, and not sure if she deserved to be trusted with one.

"Were you abused?"

He shook his head in immediate denial, "Physically - no.   They wouldn't have stood for that even from a Starfleet Admiral.   But the Doctor has helped me realise that I was a victim of another kind of abuse, most of it probably unintentional.   I suppose I should be grateful to you for making me finally come to terms with it."

"That's another kind of victimisation though, isn't it?  Thanking me for causing you more distress than I realised?  I was wrong, Tom.  I let my personal feelings cloud my judgement and it's taken me this long to even begin to let go of my anger.  I should have punished your actions, not you.  Sometimes that's a difficult distinction to make.  If I made it sound like anything else at the time, or since, then I've been very wrong."

She got up, paced the length of the window, and paced back.  He'd been open with her against her wildest expectations, and now she was at something of a loss.  She had to find the right thing to say, but it took her nearly a minute to think it up. 

"You were right when you said I have a harder job than you do, Ensign."  She regretted using the rank designation as soon as it was out of her mouth, and took another moment to re-align her thoughts.  She sat down again, this time closer to him.

"The strain of commanding this ship, this community, is colossal.   Starfleet can only prepare captains so far for situations like this.  I've made mistakes, I know that, and I'll have to answer for them when we get home.    It's a captain's responsibility to take decisions which can affect individuals as well as the entire crew.    That doesn't mean I can do anything I feel like, and it doesn't mean my actions will go unquestioned or unpunished, if they're wrong.  I fully expect to face several tribunals when we get home.  That's part of the price you pay for sitting in the chair." She put out her hand and covered one of his; the first physical contact she had initiated with him in weeks. "But even if they bust me right down to amoeba, that's not going to make me feel as bad as I feel right now for what I've been doing to you."

His reaction was interesting, at least to someone who knew him as well as she did.  To someone who didn't know him, it would probably have looked as though he was indifferent to what she'd just said.  He didn't say anything, didn't move or change expression perceptibly, but she could see his jaw clenching and the muscles in his throat working, trying to suppress the emotions welling up inside.

She knew he'd been fed a lot of very old fashioned nonsense as a child, that crying was bad, a sign of weakness.  He couldn't show that weakness in front of her, but the need to let go was nearly crippling him.  He sat, stony faced, not able to look at her, a battle for control raging inside him.  She knew there was nothing she could do except wait it out.  She owed him the courtesy to let him deal with it himself, in the way he felt most comfortable, so she didn't intrude or advise him to let it out (which she knew from her own experience tended to be counterproductive).  Even more than Parises, Starfleet captains were taught not to show their emotions, but they were taught in adulthood; equipped with the appropriate techniques without the attendant turbulent associations of childhood.  Admiral Paris had probably been telling this boy not to cry since he'd been three or four.  It wasn't right and it wasn't kind, and she found herself resenting the Admiral on his behalf.

"I'm sorry," he managed to say eventually, but he couldn't continue and shut up again.

She patted his hand understandingly, trying to walk a fine line between appearing too mothering and not sympathetic enough.

"The Doctor has told me about your depression.  Don't blame him, he felt he had to."

Finally, he achieved enough control over his larynx to talk again, in a near-normal tone.

"I guess I still have a way to go before I stop over-reacting to things.  I thought I was out from under."

"But when the Gorgon starts being kind to you, it's a bit of a shock to the system."

Laughter bubbled up and escaped past the incipient tears, "something like that."

 

Just then, Janeway's comm badge announced that Chakotay was trying to contact her.  Suppressing a grimace of impatience, she slapped at it and tried not to sound too fierce.

"Yes, what is it!"

"Captain, B'Elanna thinks she's found a way to attach the deflector dish to the Delta Flyer.  She wants to talk to Paris about it."

She didn't take her eyes off Paris as she replied, "He'll be right down."

Paris hastily stood up, and she could have sworn he looked relieved to be let off the hook before he had the chance to reveal any more of his vulnerabilities.

"I knew she'd manage," he said with some satisfaction.

"I don't want you involved in the actual transfer," she told him.

His face registered surprise, then offence, "If you think that B'Elanna and I..."

"I'm not risking this ship's most capable pilot in a spacesuit outside a crippled ship without even any transporters functional.  When you've finished with B'Elanna, report to Chakotay with your ideas about the deployment of the conn team during the manoeuvre.  Then, if the Doctor doesn't need you, well, he's the only department on board who doesn't need another hand.  Use your best judgement.  And Tom…" she stopped him as he was about to go out of the door.

"Yes, Captain?"

"I do trust your judgement.  And I do trust you."  She was quite surprised, having said it because at that point it was the right, the only thing to say, to realise that she really did mean it.

His face registered a mixture of relief, hope and scepticism as he left the room.  She was left wondering how someone who had spent so much of his life learning to mask his real self from outsiders could be so utterly transparent when his shields were down.    She found herself experiencing a similar mixture of relief and hope. She had been unaware that this had been nagging away at the back of her mind for weeks - until quite abruptly she found it was gone and her mind felt clearer and more focussed than it had been for weeks, possibly months.

Left alone, she retreated to her ready room and took the opportunity to clear up a load of administrative items she'd been putting on hold, giving her crew a little more time to refine and improve their repair plans before she inflicted herself upon them again.


	9. Chapter 9

 

She emerged from the back entrance of her ready room a couple of hours after her talk with Paris, hungry and ready to tolerate even a Starfleet ration pack. 

Chakotay appeared at her elbow almost as if he'd been staking out the corridor, or had someone on watch, which he probably had.

"Captain, I sent Kim and Vorik out in the Delta Flyer to do a preliminary scan on the planet."

"And?"

"No sentient life-forms, but a pretty nice looking place.  We could pick a lot worse location for an overhaul.  Equatorial climate is good, and the ground consistency will easily support a landing.  The Doctor's examining the bio-data they transmitted back now.  The Flyer should be back in a few minutes."

"Good.  Sounds like luck might be turning back in our direction.  Make sure Paris reviews the data thoroughly too, so he can select the best approach."

"I hear you had a talk with him?" Chakotay probed, cautiously.  His obvious protectiveness, now that she had allowed herself to become aware of it, both amused and exasperated her.

"I'm beginning to wonder if the entire crew is conspiring to protect him from me!  Don't worry, Commander, I didn't order him dangled over the warp converters."

His face creased into a smile that immediately lightened her mood several more shades.  "Glad to hear it.  That could be quite uncomfortable."

"I'll bear that in mind the next time you step out of line."

"Wouldn't be much point.  They're not converting anything at the moment."

"As if I needed to be reminded of that."  The moment's pleasure was gone as soon as it had arrived.  “You were right, of course, Chakotay.  I’m sorry I wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind.  Please never stop telling me the truth.”

“No matter what the consequences,”  he promised her.   “I will always tell you what you need to know, not what I think you want to hear.”

 

 

They emerged from the turbolift into immediate chaos, which had spilled out from Engineering to infect the entire deck.  Almost immediately, they were both nearly bowled over by a team of four engineering assistants carrying a large, makeshift piece of equipment at a fast trot down the corridor.  Pressed up against the corridor wall to let them pass, Janeway and Chakotay watched them disappear, and stepped away from the wall, only to slam back again as a second team rocketed past them with equal despatch.  They were both a little more cautious the second time, but after several moments had passed and there was no sign of a further mob, they shrugged at each other and proceeded side by side into Engineering.

B'Elanna estimated that her people would need at least twelve hours to move the deflector dish and another three or four after that to have it working.  Within half an hour of the meeting where the proposal had been made, she'd had twenty three people in spacesuits crawling over the hull of Voyager, and when the Delta Flyer returned from its reconnaissance, a second team led by Seven pounced on it and started desecrating (Paris's description) its hull with hastily designed and manufactured mounting assemblies (the same items with which Janeway and Chakotay had almost been assaulted outside engineering).   The dish was too big to be actually mounted ON the Delta Flyer, so she had designed a framework assembly in which the Delta Flyer would fit.  The trick had been not to affect the Flyer’s manouverability so she’d had to design the cage so that it sat clear of all the thruster and drive surfaces.  It made the Flyer look absolutely absurd, floating in space just below Voyager’s lower hull like the misshapen calf of some odd space-whale. 

Since the rest of the major repairs would require the input of the engineers currently working on that project, the rest of the crew were limited in the work they could do.    Kim got cracking on the data network pathways, roping in as many volunteers as he could find.  Janeway took a crew to start clean-up duties on the bridge; and Tuvok took a team in a shuttle to scout the rest of the system and watch for movement from the nearby systems any one of which could be the home base of the race which had attacked them. Given Janeway’s restriction on Paris’ involvement in the rigging phase of the Flyer project, he checked on the doctor, discovered there was nothing much happening in Sickbay, and went looking for somewhere else where he could be helpful, and ended up working with Kim in the Jeffries tubes leading from the Computer Core.

 

Kim and Paris didn't finish re-connecting the final burned-out junction on the primary ODN system until late into the night.  Kim looked shattered, he hadn't slept ever since the battle whereas at least Paris had got his head down for a few hours in sickbay.

"You need sleep," he told his friend, firmly, using his best, 'I'm a doctor, I know best' tone. 

Harry shook his head.  "Too much to do.  I need to run signal integrity diagnostics on what we've just done, then we have to get...."

"Harry!  Enough!  I don't want to have to explain to the Doc why the ship's Operations Manager suffered exhaustion while I was working right alongside him.  Now I can't pull ordinary rank anymore, but I'm telling you, you either go straight to your quarters to sleep for 12 hours, or you're going to sickbay so the Doctor can decide how long to drug you for, and I warn you, he's cranky at the moment."

"You wouldn't!" They locked eyes in challenge for no more than a few moments.  Paris registered slight surprise in his friend's brown eyes as he realised Paris was serious.  "You would.   Okay, I'm going.  But you can explain to Tuvok why he hasn't got his sensor network back."   Moving stiffly, Kim backed himself out of the junction and stretched.  Paris pointedly took his tool kit from him.

"I'm going already!"   Kim headed for the turbolift without looking back.

Paris sighed.  "It was so much easier when I outranked them," he commented to no one in particular.

 

 

Fifteen hours of frantic activity later, they were ready.  While Voyager hung helplessly in space, the Delta Flyer, with Paris, Kim and Seven on board, took up position above the main hull.  Kim would handle deflector control, Paris would pilot and handle positioning, and Seven was there for her superior mathematical abilities.  Paris had assigned his two best pilots, Culhane and Henderson, to each of the other shuttles, which would ride herd, each backed up by three other officers from different departments, all of them picked specifically for their ability to think quickly in a crisis.  Janeway, Chakotay and Tuvok remained on board Voyager, with no one at the helm, since the damage to the bridge had hardly been touched, and there was no helm console even if there had been any power to control at it.

Communications between the ships was back up, and the sounds of final preparation going on in the Delta Flyer came filtering clearly through onto the bridge.

"Okay," Janeway and her companions heard Paris saying, "Let's get her pointed in the right direction."  There was a short pause, and then his voice continued, this time addressing Janeway directly across the link.  "Ready when you are, Captain," he reported.

"Proceed, Mr Paris," she ordered, feeling utterly useless and wishing that she'd made the decision to go with him on the Flyer where at least she could have felt a part of the action.  But this was her pilot's show and she had realised that she had to leave it up to him.  Accompanying him would have sent the wrong signal to the rest of the crew - that she didn't have enough faith in him.

"Tuvok," she ordered, "Take inertial damping down to ten percent."  She wanted to be able to feel her ship when it started to rotate.

Almost simultaneously with her order, she could hear Paris instruct Kim, "Give me five percent juice, Harry, and keep it tight into the ship."

The main bridge viewscreen, which was not at optimal efficiency but functional enough to watch what was going on, tracked the Flyer as she nosed gently in towards one side of the main saucer, the absurdly large dish slung over the nose of the sleek super-shuttle, making it look as if it had already crashed into something, and flattened its front end on impact.  Janeway knew that because of that dish occluding the viewports, Paris was flying on instruments alone, he couldn't see anything outside the shuttle except for the back end of the dish.  There was a visual pickup hooked onto the top edge of the dish, but that would have given him a massive parallax error; useless for close manoeuvring.

There was the gentlest of bumps and she could feel their re-orientation begin almost imperceptibly.  The ship started to rotate slowly, port side upwards.  Once he'd got her going, Paris backed the Delta Flyer off and moved around to reposition.  There was nothing to stop Voyager rotating once she'd started; he had to apply an identical force in exactly the opposite direction in order to align her in a suitable position to start pushing.  This re-positioning was in some ways the more difficult manoeuvre to accomplish; as long as the subsequent deflector beam was aligned square to the hull, the ship would move in the right direction.  Then it was just a question of keeping Voyager and the Delta Flyer in that perfect alignment.  The Delta Flyer, whilst imparting momentum to Voyager, would experience an equal and opposite force which would have to be overcome with her own propulsion systems.  An ordinary shuttle would never have had the power to do it. 

Voyager's rotation slowed then stopped (relative to the local system) as the Flyer nudged in again.  They were ready to get underway.

The Flyer took up her final position.

"Prepare to accelerate," Paris warned the Voyager bridge crew.  "We'll increase acceleration slowly to a one gee equivalent over two minutes."

"Acknowledged." Janeway replied.  "Tuvok, prepare to take down the gravity grid over the same timeframe."  She made a shipwide announcement to expect fluctuations in gravitational conditions, and then sat back firmly in her chair.

She watched the Flyer nudge in slowly and felt the jolt as the ship engaged with the deflector beam.  The acceleration was so smooth, and Tuvok kept pace with it so perfectly, that she hardly felt her weight fluctuate at all.  It was a perfect example of Einstein's principle of equivalence put into practice.

"Captain," Paris reported over the comm link, a justifiable amount of pride coming through in his tone.  "We're at full acceleration.  No problems to report."

She heard Chakotay's faint sigh of relief beside her and smiled across at him as she acknowledged Paris.  "Keep up the good work, Tom.  Keep her steady."  She stood up, heading for the turbo lift.  "I'll be down in engineering," she told Chakotay.  "We've got a lot of work to do to get the landing systems on line."

 

Chakotay watched her depart and allowed himself the luxury of relaxing back in his chair for a few moments, enjoying the sense of satisfaction that had crept up on him in the last few minutes.  Observing Captain and Pilot interacting with at least some of the old, easy relationship he had once envied made him wonder exactly what had been the deciding moment when Kathryn Janeway had become, or been made, aware of the massive blind spot she had set up in her consciousness.  Had it been anything he had said to her, or the Doctor? Or something of which he was unaware.   Knowing how best to get through to a stubborn captain was one of the things which distinguished a good first officer from a mediocre one, and Chakotay had never aspired to be the latter. 

Having that talk with Tom a few hours ago seemed to have cleared the air between them, and she looked and sounded happier, as if a weight had dropped away from her.  And Tom - during the preparations he'd seemed to walk a little taller again, looked less like a scolded dog looking for somewhere to crawl out of sight.  It was just a pity that it had taken something so monumentally inconvenient and dangerous as their current situation to have allowed the cracks to show enough to be chipped away at.  He just hoped that once this was all over, they two of them would be able to build on the progress they'd already made. 

 

They really didn't need a senior officer in charge of the bridge, so Chakotay eventually retreated to the quiet of his own office, too adrenaline saturated to actually sleep but recognising that the crew knew their jobs and would do them better without him standing over them distracting them.

The Captain, he knew, had returned to the bridge and was busy patching together wrecked consoles.  He could have joined her there, but she'd already tossed him out once as well.  He wondered if the Doctor could use a hand in sickbay, but even without Paris's help the medical team had discharged the last of their patients many hours ago.  

Thinking about sickbay put him back in mind of the conversation he and Janeway had had, was it hours or days ago now?

He sat down at his desk and pulled his terminal towards him.

"Computer, display service record of Thomas Eugene Paris, prior to his arrival on Voyager."   The sad summary of one disgraced Starfleet scion scrolled itself down his screen.

"Display Starfleet Academy record," he commanded, and read the summarised information, occasionally branching off to read a tutor's report.  Nothing jumped out at him.  It seemed to be exactly as Janeway had described, the record of a totally ordinary student whom almost everybody who taught him felt could have been more.

Something was recorded somewhere, he was sure of it, which would explain the enigma that was Tom Paris.   And at the moment, he had nothing better to do than go digging for it.

 

 

Although Voyager's transporters weren't working, the Delta Flyer and both shuttles had full transport capability.  Once Voyager's bridge had been put back together enough to work (if not look pretty), Janeway requested transport over to the Delta Flyer.  She found Culhane at the helm and Paris, unwilling to leave but obviously too tired to concentrate, dozing over a darkened console at the back of the cockpit.  Kim looked up from his console and acknowledged her presence with a respectful nod but said nothing.  Seven, immersed in thought, didn't even acknowledge her. 

"How's it going?" she asked Culhane.

"Very well, Captain.  Keeping an eye on one of the dish mountings, which is showing more shear stress than the others, but it's solid at the moment."

"How long until we begin deceleration?"

Culhane checked his readings.  "Eight more hours, Captain."

"Are you okay to stay on watch?"

"I just beamed in an hour ago, I'm good for another six or seven."

"Good.  I think I'll take your boss away and make him sleep for a while."

Culhane lowered his voice so much that she had to lean in to hear him.  "Could you take Ensign Kim and Seven as well?  They won't leave unless he does and they're both getting…"

"…tetchy?"

He nodded, a long-suffering expression on his face.  She suppressed a smile.  Seven was difficult to deal with when she was being stubborn and Kim could be a grizzly when he was being protective, particularly towards his best friend.  She left Culhane and moved back to the cockpit interior.

"All right, you three.  On your feet."

Paris jerked out of his doze and looked up in surprise.  "Captain, if something goes wrong…"

"…if something goes wrong, you'll probably sleep through it.  Tuvok will be here, and you were the one who re-certified Culhane at level eight last year.  All of you need hot food and a proper rest.  Neelix has been cooking up a storm since we got a power pack up to him last night.  Come on, I'll join you and we can discuss the details of the deceleration manoeuvre while we eat."

Since it was an order from the Captain rather than an invitation to dinner, none of them declined.  She called Tuvok to replace Kim and once he'd beamed in, she had the four of them beamed directly to the mess hall.

"It's remarkable how steady the acceleration is," she commented over a steaming spoonful of one of Neelix's better stews.  "You really wouldn't know the gravity grid was down."

"It's saving us a massive amount of power," Kim agreed, looking pleasantly surprised by the taste of the stew.

"It was an idea worthy of an engineer," Janeway smiled, trying to catch Paris's eye, but he was too busy eyeing a large lump in his bowl with tired suspicion.  He'd always been picky with his food - not that surprising when you considered that the Paris family had retained a personal cook since before he was born and he'd developed a sophisticated palette young (although she'd never been able to square that with his passion for pizza).  He raised an eyebrow once he'd passed the lump as vaguely edible and processed what she had said to him.

"High praise."

She got down to business before he fell asleep with his head in his bowl.

"Although it will cost us extra power, we can bring the gravity grid and the inertial dampeners back on line if you think it would be too much of a risk to flip Voyager before starting deceleration."

"It doesn't make any difference, Captain.  It's all relative out here."

"I know the theory, Tom, but practice isn't always as simple.  Your principal reference points are moving a lot faster than they were."

"We're going to have to bring inertial dampeners and the grid back anyway when we stop accelerating," Kim pointed out, looking and sounding just as exhausted as Paris.  "Otherwise we'll bounce the crew about all over the place."

Tom shook his head, his eyes gradually closing to half-mast.  "Nearly everyone on board is trained in free fall conditions, and it won't be for long.  Give them some warning, they'll be fine."

Janeway was inclined to go with Paris on this one.  "They've been through worse many times.  It might send the doctor a bit of business but…" she trailed off, noticing that two thirds of her audience was deserting her, not in body but definitely in spirit.  She glanced at Seven, sitting beside her, who had so far not contributed to the discussion.  "I wasn't aware my conversation was so scintillating."

Both Tom and Harry had fallen asleep, leaning against each other, their heads touching.  They were completely out of it.  Seven raised an eyebrow.  "Regeneration is much more efficient, but it does lack a certain aesthetic.  I find myself wishing for the doctor's camera."

Janeway laughed.  “We all deserve some rest.  Let’s march these two down to their quarters, and then I’m going to sleep for eight hours straight, if luck will let me.  I suggest you take the time for regeneration as well, I’ll need you on the Bridge at your best when we try to land this thing.”


	10. Chapter 10

Flipping the ship over went as smoothly as they could hope, and then the Delta Flyer re-positioned itself in front of her and started pushing against her direction of motion.  The effect inside the ship was exactly the same as the acceleration force had been on the other side, and after a few minutes of floating about in a near-freefall (not completely so because the ship was twisting at the time) everybody was able to get back to work.  Time was getting very short now; the decision was made to decelerate Voyager more slowly to begin with and increase the period over which she was moving at high speed.  When they were nearer the planet, they would bring the inertial dampeners back on line and bring her up short without smearing the crew into a decorative paste on the floor.  The short-term effect of this was to render the ship's apparent gravity at about two thirds.  Other than making people a little more careful about making sudden or violent movements, they seemed to settle well enough.

The next 24 hours were ones of anticipation and growing optimism, as one by one the ship's essential systems started flickering back to life.  Chakotay did his part like everyone else, but one of the most frustrating things about being a senior command officer in a situation like this was that there came a stage where the administration and organisation was done, and your people were getting on with their jobs and trying not to be insubordinate as they found ways to tell you you were only in the way.

Of course, when you had a chief engineer like B'Elanna Torres, politeness didn't enter into it.  She simply told you that you were being a pest and tossed you out on your ear.

Something kept drawing him back to those damned records on Tom Paris.  Something that whispered taunts in the back of his brain when he tried to ignore it, telling him he was missing the obvious.  He took the time to go on a brief vision quest, but it was unsatisfying and rushed, and even his spirit guide seemed to be regarding him with intelligent eyes full of disappointment.  Keep looking, was all she would say, a good hunt is always worth the wait.

He was no closer to his imaginary goal when the ship was finally decelerated into a slow, high trajectory that would allow orbit insertion with the minimum of power.  Culhane was at the Voyager conn for that manoeuvre, at Paris's request, and the junior pilot glowed with accomplishment as he completed task without a hitch, and earned the praise of both the Captain and Tom, who had remained on the Delta Flyer so as not to cramp the younger man's style.

Having achieved a stable orbit, Janeway called a meeting to discuss the next phase of the operation. Her people looked tired and grubby but they were still alert and attentive.  They were the best group of officers she could ever have hoped to work with and she realised, with tired regret, that she didn't tell them that enough.

Still, now was not the time to get maudlin, no matter what emotion her exhausted brain was dumping on her, and she wasted no time getting down to business.

"B'Elanna, are the systems we'll need for planetfall back on line?"

Her Chief Engineer, face rather attractively streaked with some kind of dark lubricant, tossed a straggle of damp hair away from her face, bringing Janeway back momentarily into 'guilt' mode. "Yes, Captain, but not at full capacity."

"We still have the moon option in reserve," Chakotay reminded her, the quintessential first officer proposing alternatives even when they weren't personally to his liking.  She could tell Chakotay was torn, as she was herself.   It was that risk-reward trade off again, the one all captains were well acquainted with.

"Tom, with the landing systems in their present condition, can you get her down safely?"

He stirred a little awkwardly in his seat, "I can't give you a cast iron guarantee, Captain.  Commander Chakotay's scouted four pretty good landing sites but the first two approaches take her over too many different geoclimactic regions.  I prefer the fourth, as it brings us in over a large ocean; no land/water transitions to give us turbulance.  Any sudden bad weather could give us a pretty rough ride."

"But it's possible."

He shrugged.  "If we don't lose anything, we should be able to get her down in one piece."

 

In the end, it was her decision whether or not to attempt it.  If they failed - if Paris failed, they would lose the ship, all hope of ever getting home, and up to a dozen lives, including most of the senior staff.  But if they didn't attempt it, they were a sitting duck for any hostiles who showed up in the next few days, and time was getting very short.  Her officers sat in silence, watching her, although no one attempted to hurry her or push her in any particular direction.  She felt a strong desire to retreat to her room and think about it some more, but she would only be delaying the inevitable, and the decision was inevitable, given their situation.

"Mr Paris, what would be your preference?  When is the best time to do this?"

"I would recommend going in three hours from now, if we can be ready. Weather conditions look about as good as we’re going to get." 

She felt another spurt of pride that he'd anticipated the question and had a prompt answer for her.  She had no doubt he'd considered weather conditions, planet rotation and every other factor that might help or hinder their effort. 

"Three hours it is then," she agreed.  "I want all department heads to report ready in two hours.  Commander, take the last shuttle and join the away teams before we commence."  She didn't want to send Chakotay away, and knew he'd want to stay, but the phrase 'putting all your eggs in one basket' came to mind.  If Voyager went down, someone would have to lead what remained of the crew, and no one on board was better qualified to start a new colony than her Native American First Officer.  She debated sending Kim to join him, but he was too indispensible at ops.  Choosing between B'Elanna and Seven to stay for engineering was difficult, but she had decided to send B'Elanna down and keep Seven on board.  B'Elanna was less dependent on technology and more likely to adapt to a natural environment, and in a time-critical situation, Seven's borg ability to interface with ship systems could prove more useful than B'Elanna's undoubted improvisational genius.  She waited until the rest of her officers had filed out of the room before imparting the good news to B'Elanna.

Predictably, it did not go down well.  She didn't want to make it a flat out order, but her engineer's temper was sometimes not reasonable - sometimes not even particularly rational.  Janeway understood B'Elanna's desire to remain, but in the end had neither the time nor the patience to reason with her.    She watched the younger woman stamp out of the room, responding to her sharply worded order, and felt along with amused affection a stab of regret.  She hoped that it wouldn't be the last exchange she ever had with B'Elanna Torres.  She didn't want the other woman to remember her only as an implacable and unreachable commander.  

Paris of course, wasn't an issue.  It had been taken for granted by 150 people that he would be the one to take Voyager down.  Janeway, even Paris himself hadn't questioned that fact, but it was a terrible responsibility to load onto those shoulders and it was difficult to shake off those final lingering doubts caused by the months of strain between them.  Although they had cleared the air the awkwardness was still there, nagging at the back of her mind.  Could he do it?  What if he couldn't - there was no one else she could call on instead.    Landing large Starships was not yet on the curriculum at Starfleet Academy, for the excellent reason that prior to the Intrepid class, there had been no starships in the fleet that were actually designed to do it.   Chakotay had landed Voyager before but not under conditions anything like this, besides, he had trained as a small ship pilot, and that had been many years ago.     No, this time, it had to be Paris or no one and there wasn't anyone on the ship who wasn't aware of that fact.  It seemed that her past few months of blindness where he was concerned was in the process of catching up with her and biting her on the nose.  

 

Most of the remaining bridge officers retreated to their respective rooms for a few minutes' down time, possibly to record any last messages they might want to leave in the event that the worst happened, and then met in the mess for a quiet, subdued meal. 

The Captain took the opportunity to catch up on her log keeping and such personal hygiene as was presently available.  Once they had put the ship down, and the systems were all back on line, she promised herself a long soak in her hot tub, absolutely no interruptions.  Or maybe they would find themselves a nice geothermal pool at just the right temperature.  Neelix would be sure to organise a party.

She would have liked to relax, but that simply wasn't a possibility at the moment.  The planet loomed in her window, blue and green and shining, a pretty and in some ways welcoming sight, but it was an awfully big ball to smack into, and although Voyager now limped around her orbit under her own power, her systems were erratic.  The crew were well aware that had the senior officers been confident they could land the ship without incident, they would not be arranging an evacuation.  And everyone knew that if Voyager didn't make it, then that would be a final end to all their chances to make it back home.  It was a nice enough planet, but no one wanted to have to colonise it, especially not given the proven ferocity of their neighbours.  The atmosphere on board was best described as 'electric' and she could think of no other way to phrase it in her log.

Ten minutes before the agreed landing time, she left her room and headed back to the bridge, meeting no one in the corridors on the way.  The ship felt echoingly empty without her crew, and the bridge similarly so without Chakotay's solid presence in the chair beside her.  She sat for a few minutes, watching her officers work.  Tuvok, at his customary Tactical station behind her and to her right, Kim at ops behind her left shoulder, and one spare bridge officer, Ayala actually, running scans from Science station in the alcove to the far left. Seven occupied the engineering station to Tuvok's right, at the side of the bridge, and she and Paris, at the conn of course, were making last minute adjustments to the new console interfaces, fine-tuning backup systems and response times.

 

Obviously also keeping an eye on the time, Paris finished up his task at precisely the appointed hour and swivelled round to face her.  "We're good to go, Captain."

She nodded, grateful for long years of practise in not allowing her nerves to show.  "Whenever you're ready, Mr Paris."

Other bridge officers hastily took their stations and the ambience in the room became brisk and professional.  Everyone stood or sat poised, waiting to play their particular parts.  Even though his back was to her, she could see Tom take a deep breath before running the official pre-landing sequence.  He reported the results without a trace of nerves in his voice, a lifetime veteran of the same training in hiding his emotions.

"Descent course plotted, atmospheric controls at standby, landing mechanisms on line, Inertial dampers at…"  he couldn't in all honesty use the word 'maximum' and substituted "adequate… I hope." 

While it wasn't a ringing endorsement, it was the best they were going to get, and his tone, which showed that his sense of humour wasn't completely submerged beneath that veneer of professionalism, reassured her.  She had missed it, and tried to banish the thought that suddenly occurred, that it might be the last time she ever heard it.

"Take us down, Mr Paris," she commanded.

"Aye, Captain."

Voyager nosed down towards the planet's atmosphere, edged into a new trajectory by the lightest possible touch.  Although the inertial dampers were not up to factory specs, they were working well enough that the relative change in position between the ship and the planet couldn't actually be felt - so the sensation of dropping was only in her imagination - but she felt it in her stomach anyway.

The first part of the flight was smooth and she was just starting to wonder if she had been worried unnecessarily when a tremor started to grow in the deck beneath her feet.  They had hit atmosphere and the wounded ship was trying to readjust to the change in pressure against her hull, and as the bow-shock caused the temperature to grow, the shuddering became worse.  Then the alarms, those which were still functioning, started to go off all at once, causing a cacophony of sound.  Janeway killed them from her console and didn’t need to demand a status report – the main computer was showing another fatal error.

“Landing systems just failed,” Paris reported in a calm voice belied by the frantic movement of his hands as he tried to keep control,  “going to manual flight.”

“Seven!  Re-route control interfaces.  Get them back, now!”  Janeway shouted over her shoulder.  Seven had already resorted to her borg assimilation tubes to dig deep into the systems at her console, but nothing was responding.  “The core just crashed again,”  she told Janeway.  “Attempting to re-initialise.”

Janeway clutched at the side of her chair so hard the upholstery groaned.  Re-initialising would take minutes – minutes they didn’t have.

"We just lost impulse,"  Paris reported, not sounding quite so calm now.

"Abort the landing!"  Janeway shouted over the increased roar of the ship

Paris shook his head without sparing the time to look round at her.  "Too late.  We can't make escape velocity from here.  We're going down."  It was not an order or a decision.  It was a statement of fact.

"Inertial Dampers are down to ten percent," Kim reported, his voice pitched ever so slightly higher than normal.  He didn't actually need to tell anyone; the fact that they could all now feel the ship plunging downwards, tugged savagely by the planet's gravitational pull, was enough to let them know that they no longer had anything but minimal protection against the turbulence that was increasing with every second as the air thickened around the ship and tossed her first to one side and then the other.   Not for the first time, Janeway wished for seatbelts as standard on bridge seats as she was thrown clear and landed awkwardly, pulling at least three muscles.  She crawled back to her command chair and hung on to the command console as the ship bucked and twisted, by anyone’s standards, pretty much out of control. 

"We're coming in too fast!"  Paris exclaimed, not sparing a split second to take his hands off the helm controls, "Culhane, Henderson, we need a virtual parachute here."

"Are you asking what I think you're asking?" came Culhane's voice from the cockpit of the delta flyer, presently shadowing them above and to starboard.  He had shields – better shields than Voyager did, or he would never have made it into atmosphere with the deflector dish still attached.  As it was, it didn’t matter how non-aerodynamic the flyer was, it would stand up to atmosphere a lot better than Voyager at this point, a theory Paris was about to put to the test.

"Get in front of us and use the deflector to slow our forward momentum," ordered Paris.  There was a pause.  Culhane knew as well as Paris that what Paris was asking was close to suicide.  Then, "Aye, sir."  A couple of seconds later, the main viewscreen showed that the flyer, oriented back to front, was nudging in front of them.  It took another ten seconds before they felt a jolt, and the velocity readings winking a baleful red on the conn panel started to drop, slowly at first, then dramatically.

"Four thousand kilometers per hour," Tuvok reported in a voice that was blissfully steady, reading from his own console which was reporting the same data.  "Three thousand… two thousand… one thousand five hundred… One thousand…"

"That's enough, Culhane!"  Paris called out once his own readings had dropped to nearly six hundred, "Get out of there and stand well off."

Without further acknowledgement, the flyer banked off to one side and was lost to view.  Paris put it out of his mind.  He couldn't afford to think of anything else now, couldn't afford any distractions.  His mind was crowded with trajectory calculations, angle judgements, thruster controls, pitch and roll and yaw considerations.  No one on the bridge said another word, they were all aware that this was probably the most difficult thing Paris had ever been asked to do at the controls of a Starship, and that none of them could help him in any way.  All their lives depended on him being able to deliver a controlled crash landing of a seven hundred thousand ton dead weight which was about as aerodynamic as a brick.

 

Kim, clinging to his console, was put in mind of another landing – one which had never happened thanks to his and Chakotay’s interference with the time line – a landing in which Paris had failed to save the ship and she had died, along with all her crew, on a bleak snowfield, to be covered with ice and snow and forgotten by all but the two officers in the Delta Flyer, who had made it home but had never forgotten.   This reminder did not exactly bring him any comfort.  He’d seen the results, the twisted wreckage, the frozen bodies.  He knew Paris could quite easily mess this up, it didn’t take much; a split second, the wrong decision taken out of a thousand decisions in quick succession.  All he could do was concentrate as hard as he could on his Ops station, keeping all the available power routed through to where it would do the most good – shield emitters, thrusters; everything else could go. Without asking for permission he killed life support to every deck except the bridge, cut out all communication except the channel between the two ships,  dropped everything but the structural integrity fields, giving Paris as clean an outline for the ship to fly through atmosphere as he could.   It made a difference;  as Voyager dropped through the outer atmosphere layers and into the thicker Troposphere, the bucketing eased but the sensation of dropping increased;  she was literally falling out of the sky, her shape not designed to give her any kind of physical lift at all.  Kim realised he could possibly do something about that and hastily adjusted the profile of the shields so that they shaped more like an aircraft wing.   He could feel the result; Voyager stopped plummeting and started – well, gliding was too optimistic a word, but she was behaving more like an atmospheric craft in a free fall, and hopefully, that was something Tom, who Harry knew was also qualified on atmospherics, could work with,

“I don’t know what you just did, Harry,” Tom called from the Conn,  “But I think you might just have saved our lives.”

“Flying wing.” Kim clarified in the fewest words possible that he thought Tom would get.

“Ah.  Perfect.”

“This does not feel perfect.”  Seven complained.

“I think I’ve got just enough descent control to work with.  Everybody hold on tight, we’re coming in VERY hot.  Harry, give me a five degree angle down on the main viewer.”  Tom ordered.  He was mostly flying on instruments but had been periodically glancing up at the viewer, which currently showed nothing but the air ahead of them.  Kim complied, and as the view rotated downwards, the long smear of blue water came into view.  

 

Janeway’s chair squeaked in protest again as her clutching fingers got a death-grip on the upholstery and hung on grimly.   Water flashed beneath them like the shuttle ride over San Francisco bay - on fast forward.  Way ahead of them, on the horizon, a blue-green smudge announced the presence of land, and as Janeway stared, it resolved itself into a low lying island and sped towards them, as Tom edged the ship nearer and nearer to the water until there was an almighty bump and then the shuddering eased as the sea beneath them took the weight and pushed back, cushioning the lower hull inside a huge trough of water and starting to slow her down faster and faster – but the shoreline was terrifyingly near now and still approaching with unreasonable speed.

The ship rode a self-generated wave across the shallow waters of the continental shelf, her rotund lower hull acting as a badly designed but just functional water ski.  Her upper hull was angled up into the air just enough for the lower hull to maintain contact with the water at the right angle to generate the controlled slide towards a wide, deep sandy beach, and the flat, wide surface also acted as an airbrake.  Too high an angle and she'd flip clean over and break her back, too low, and she'd never hold the skid onto the beach.

Everyone on the bridge held their breaths as the land approached with an almost unreal rapidity, and they could see that beyond the beach stood a thick jungle of very green foliage including many large trees.

At the very last moment,  Paris used what was left of the manouvering thrusters to slam the nose down and she ploughed into the water and bucked wildly.  The edge of her main saucer dug in and arrested her forward momentum with a savage jolt.

The ship ploughed up a huge bow wave of water and sand, and after several interminable seconds, came to rest, remarkably gently, well out of the sea, the front of the main hull less than two metres from the start of the treeline.

 

 

There was a long, long silence around the bridge, as everyone sat motionless and concentrated on breathing deeply.

Janeway was the first to move.  Although her legs felt like rubber, she stood and made her way carefully down to the conn, where she rested her hand on Paris' shoulder.  He was shaking slightly.

"You cut that a bit fine, Mr Paris."

"Yes Ma'am."  His voice was shaking slightly as well, just as hers was.

She patted him.  "Good job, Tom.  Damn good job."

"Thank you Captain." 

The brief exchange had given her enough time to fully restore her composure, and she turned to issue orders to the rest of the bridge staff, none of whom had moved yet.  "Tuvok, organise the deployment of the external field generators, I want them in place and working by tonight.  Kim, co-ordinate the return of the escape pods and make sure everyone's accounted for."

The senior bridge officers hastened to obey, leaving Janeway standing on a nearly deserted bridge.  She looked back at her helmsman.  "Paris, do you feel up to calming B'Elanna down about all the sand you just put in her engine nacelles?"

"Frankly, I'd rather crash land the ship again. But, your wish is my command.  Think well of me when I'm gone, Captain."

"You've got enough blather to be Irish, Get on with you."

He grinned and stood up, heading for the turbo lift.  She stopped him with a word, "Tom?"

He turned back towards her.

"That was extraordinary piloting."

"Thank you, Captain.  You might want to congratulate Culhane too.  What he did was very brave and took a lot of skill."

"I'll bear that in mind." 

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

Staring out of her ready room window, coffee steaming from the cup in her hands, rich and aromatic, Janeway watched the little red, yellow and blue people swarming like ants along the beach and over the hull, much of which she couldn't see because of the contours of the ship. It was disconcerting to see bright sky instead of a starfield, but not unpleasant. Sunlight blazed from a perfect blue sky and turned the hull a bright silver-white, filtered only by the protective force field being generated around the entire ship.  That field, as well as making the ship look near-invisible to sensors from space, also filtered most of the ultra-violet light.  As a consequence, several off duty crewmembers had concluded that the ship's hull was the best place to hang out for recreation.  Unfortunately, the only really flat expanses of the hull were the sections in front of the picture windows on deck three (her quarters), and the roof of deck two.  Neelix had organised a kind of outdoor café outside the forward section of deck three, and the roof of deck two had been taken over by exhausted, acheing crewpersons just wanting to soak up a bit of sun.  She didn't have the heart to ban them from their leisure but she wished they hadn't chosen the areas overlooked by both her ready room and the conference room to drape themselves.  Even though, given the set of the windows, she actually had to walk to the window and look out to see them, and they couldn't see in, it was - distracting.    That Neelix's café similarly intruded into the view from her quarters was annoying.

 

But repairs were going extremely well, much more quickly than they would have been done hanging in space.  She now found that she had little to do that didn't intrude onto the responsibilities of her department heads, and was having to consciously resist the temptation to micro-manage, something she knew she did too much anyway.

So, for the last hour or so, she had been alternatively standing and sitting at her window, savouring the blue sky and the gold of the beach and the soothing greens of the forest just beyond the front of the ship and sweeping along up the beach as far as the eye could see.  If it hadn't been for the ever-present threat of being discovered and blown to bits, helpless on the ground, by a vengeful alien warship come to investigate the loss of its colleagues, she wouldn't have felt any pull to leave.  This was the first planet time that the majority of her crew had had in years.

She had put it off too long, and now there was no more excuse.  In the three days before they made planetfall, she hadn't wanted to distract Paris, and so had held back from the talk she knew she had to have with him.  She realised that she hadn't even officially re-instated him - everyone had just taken it for granted that he was back on bridge duty.  At this moment she knew he wasn't on the bridge but doing the rounds of the various departments, warning them about the dangers of ultra-violet rays and doling out skin protection to anyone likely to venture outside the shield.  Perhaps it was the effects of the last few days, or the fact that they had already cleared the air between them, but Paris had looked more cheerful and more confident since their last exchange.  That didn't alter the fact that there was more to say, and that if she'd said it years ago, they probably would never have got to this state in the first place.  But it was going to be hard to put her trust in his maturity.

Sighing, she made the decision not to put it off any longer and paged Paris to come to her Ready Room.

He arrived within a couple of minutes, entering tentatively when he saw her still stood at her window, no doubt wondering if he should disturb her even given that he had been summoned.

"Look at this!"  she exclaimed, waving vaguely at the spectacle outside her window.  Well, it was as good a way to break the ice between them as any.  He stepped up and looked out.  There was a moment's silence.

"Well, there's not much doubt about her being a mammal," he commented, referring to the lone female crewmember who was blissfully sprawled nude in the sunshine not ten metres away.  He said it without any personal embarrassment; she couldn't tell if that was the result of an additional veneer of medical detachment or just his own fairly matter of fact attitude to things sexual.

She couldn't help glaring at him just a little, "but it's not protocol, is it."

"The crew needs this break.  And so does their captain."

"And is that a medical opinion?"

"Partly."  He indicated the view further afield with a sweep of his hand, his eyes sparking with enthusiasm.  "Look at them, they're actually having fun!  Even the work details are enjoying themselves. Some of these people haven't had any real fun in five years.  Even adults need to have fun, you know.  Even captains." 

She gave into the impulse to smile.  "The more sophisticated the organism, the greater the need for the simplicity of play."

"What?"

"It's a very famous quote," she clarified.  "From James Kirk's logs - the original Enterprise mission."

"Yes."

She frowned.  Somehow, she had managed to ruin the cheerful, playful atmosphere that had been developing between them.  She got the impression he'd recognised the quote without her explanation - that his 'what' had been an involuntary exclamation rather than a request for information - and theorised that his father, during his single minded quest to turn Tom Paris into the perfect Starfleet officer, had probably made him read every captain's log in the archive. 

 

Still, now that the mood had changed, there was yet again no excuse to avoid getting down to the reason she'd called him here.

"Let's sit down," she offered.  Obviously aware that something was coming and just as obviously making the assumption that he wouldn't particularly enjoy it, he lowered himself cautiously to sit on the couch area beside her.  The seat had been custom fitted to match her height; with his longer legs, he looked tucked up and kind of gangly.

She didn't know quite where to start and plunged right in.

"I've been thinking about some of the things you said to me, and I've realised that I haven't been fair with you."

His slight frown indicated that this was unexpected.  His attention fixed on her just a little more alertly.

"I have singled you out.  I have reacted badly to you in circumstances where I had no right to.  I have been guilty of trying to impose my expectations on you beyond what I had a right to as your captain.  You have a right to know why I denied your request for a permanent transfer.  The truth is, while we need you as a medic, we need you more as a senior bridge officer."

"That's why you pulled me off bridge duty?"

"No.  I pulled you off bridge duty because I was offended that you had asked for a transfer.  My reaction was petty and childish."

Paris almost gaped, and took several seconds to recover his composure. "I didn't expect my captain to be - quite so candid."

"You'd better get used to it, because I haven't finished yet.  I've finally decided to say some things to you that I should probably have said three years ago.  I haven't been honest and truthful to you, and it's time I put that right.  You have a right to know."

He was staring at her with a mixture of surprise and trepidation but wisely chose not to say anything.

She found it difficult to just sit and talk like this, especially with the disconcerting intensity of his gaze on her, but she resisted the urge to get up and pace the room. 

"Why have I singled you out, of everyone in the crew, for the kind of discipline I meted out to you?  Was there method to it?  Well, yes there was, but I still let my personal feelings get in the way.  I did react badly."

She saw him react to her confession with a barely perceptible nod, accepting it in the spirit it was offered and immediately moving past it.  That made it just a little easier to continue.

"I'm going to tell you some things, about me, about this ship, that I've never told anyone before, and things won't be the same between us when I've finished.  No, don't interrupt," this as he opened his mouth to say something.  His jaw snapped shut and he subsided.  "I've never been this open with anyone before and it's going to be difficult for me, so bear with me.  Have patience.  I owe this to you.

"I know you know about Command Distance, so I'm not going to bother giving you the whole lecture - I'm sure you got chapter and verse from your father.  That's one of the reasons I can talk to you about this - like a human being and not like a figurehead.  You've always understood.  I've seen you help me maintain that distance when I needed to, and you've helped me lessen it when that was appropriate too.  You probably don't know that I relied on you a great deal - in the early days - as my barometer, to find and keep the right balance.  I've been making a lot of command-distance errors recently, because you've been keeping your head down, keeping out of harms way.  And I don't blame you.  I am too quick to threaten when I feel threatened.  I need my barometer back, and the only way I'm going to earn your trust enough to get it is to give you a trust of my own."

His eyes were so filled with compassion it made her want to cry.

"That's not necessary."

"Please, Tom, just listen."

He subsided.

"I was afraid you weren't ready to hear this.  I was afraid that it would repel you, intimidate you rather than have the effect I wanted it to have.  But I can't afford for you not to know anymore, because I've already risked destroying the thing I was trying to create, the Tom Paris I need on this ship, and I know now that without your willing co-operation it's never going to happen."

She took a break to gather the rest of her thoughts.  He stayed silent, watching her intently, waiting for her to continue.

"After everything that we've achieved over the last five years, it would be reasonable to assume that we will find other shortcuts home.   Even if we don't, we're now halfway home, the rest of the journey is unlikely to take more than another thirty years.  By which time Starfleet vessels will undoubtedly be faster and more long range and will come out to find us.   It's also reasonable to assume that in thirty years, I will still be young enough - just - to continue to captain this ship.  Whether I would still be fit to do so is another matter. 

"A captain in a situation like this has to do more than simply apply Starfleet rules and principles.  She or he has to use every ability, every talent they have; courage, logic, intelligence,  instinct, gut feelings.    It takes its toll, Tom, and it doesn't get easier with time.  If anything, it gets harder. 

"Eventually, either an accident or age or infirmity will mean that I have to step down, and then this ship will need another captain.  Right from the very early stages of our journey it was my private intention that that captain would be you."

It was the last thing he had expected to hear.  He stared at her in total brainlock for several long seconds.   "Me??"  he finally managed to whisper, in complete shock.   "but,  but... Chakotay, or Tuvok...?"

"Are fine officers with distinguished careers in Starfleet ahead of them, who will probably both get their own commands if we get back soon enough.  But you have the potential to be the kind of captain that neither Tuvok nor Chakotay could ever aspire to be."  

He was staring at her now, his eyes huge with shock and awe, and she felt a mixture of amusement and sadness.  Amusement at the very childlike and un-officer like picture he suddenly presented and sadness that his self doubt ran so deep that he'd never suspected, for a moment, that anyone might have held such an opinion of him.

"A captain needs to have the ability, not just to command their crew, but to inspire them.  Someone they would trust in the worst of circumstances, someone they would be prepared to die for.  The crew would respect Chakotay.  They would obey Tuvok, but they would follow you, and I know you understand that distinction. Both Tuvok and Chakotay have had to learn to command, like most captains have to.  That comes as naturally as breathing to you, when you let it.  I've seen you turn round and give an order, in the absolute expectation that it will be obeyed, even to those two.  And it is.  The response is instant and unquestioning.  I saw it again today, during the landing.  You are my heir, Tom, you always have been.  That is why I reacted so badly to your actions with the Moneans.  It will be more difficult now, but given a few more years, this crew will follow you to hell and back, just as they've followed me."

"Have you always thought this?" he asked, his voice returning to near normal.

"I should have told you years ago.  But there was never the right moment.  And I think I was worried about what telling you might do.    I suppose I was afraid that rather than make you work harder, it might cause you to coast, or become arrogant.   You have coasted from time to time, but fortunately there isn't an arrogant bone in your body, as your reaction just proved. 

"I know you have a bad opinion of Starfleet.  I know you think that everything that's happened - in your life, and in the last few months, has put an end to all of your chances for a reasonable career.  I have more faith in the system than that, and I know that Starfleet will make exceptions for the exceptional.  But that's not important, because we're not near Starfleet now, and if anything happens to me, they won't be the ones who make the decision about who will take my place.  Although Tuvok would make a superb captain in other circumstances, the crew won't accept him long term.  They might accept Chakotay, but you're younger and you come from a long lived family.  You will be active and capable of command long after he will.   

"I've made it clear to Tuvok and Chakotay that I expect higher standards from you than anyone else on board, without actually telling them why, but both of them know.  It's difficult not to know it, sometimes, watching you.  You're a natural leader, when you allow yourself to be.  Your tactical decisions are usually first class, they show flair and imagination and creativity, things that can't be taught.  You have the ability to think laterally, which also can't be taught.  You have a ferociously strong will and a ruthless streak which fortunately events in your life have taught you to dislike, but which is sometimes necessary in a captain.  And yet you're kind and compassionate and in some ways wise beyond your years.  Imagine how difficult that is for them, seeing in a subordinate something they might come to depend on to get them safely home one day.   You may not like the reminder of who you are, Tom but you can't get away from the fact that you have inherited generations of ability from almost every branch of your family.  With work - a lot more work - you could do even the most illustrious of your ancestors proud."

His reaction to that was totally unexpected.

"My ancestors!  The almighty Parises and Deckers and.....   I've tried to escape from them all my life!"

Janeway was totally taken aback by the vehemence of Paris' outburst.

"Tom - have I been wrong in my assumptions that you've wanted to work towards command?  You've accepted assignments where you've taken to it so naturally that I always assumed it was what you wanted."

He sighed, most of the heat fading from his expression, "I do and I don't"

"You're afraid you might fail.  That's only natural."

"No, it's not that."

"What then?"  she prompted, keeping her voice as gentle as she could. 

"Captain, how would you feel if people told you that the only reason you'd made it as a captain was because you'd got the right genes from your parents?"

She shrugged, "It's probably true to a certain extent.  I don't believe in genetic determinism, but I do believe in inherited characteristics."

He shook his head.  "It doesn't work that way.  You stop being a person.  All you are is a transmitted packet of base pair sequences, programmed to behave exactly this way and no other.  I hate it.  I don't know what I want for myself.  I never have, I've never been allowed the freedom to choose.  I'm a Paris.   Parises, particularly male Parises, go into Starfleet.  They command.   You're right.  I have liked it.  I have felt a kind of naturalness about it all, but I can't tell if it's me or those encoded responses that like it.  I can't tell if I've been brainwashed so comprehensively by my family that I'm just responding as programmed."   

The Doctor, Janeway reflected, had been right.  Tom Paris could still surprise her.

"I don't know what to say.  I thought I was telling you something that would have brought you satisfaction and self confidence.  Instead, I've touched a raw nerve I didn't even know was there."

He dropped his gaze again, regarded his hands as if they were the most fascinating things in the universe, "I told you, I'm damaged goods," he muttered.

His insistence in his own worthlessness angered her.  "No.  You are not.  You've been hurt, more than I realised.  But you are not damaged.  Starfleet needs people like you, Tom.   We need combative souls, people who will keep reminding us not to become complacent and hidebound.   I know it's not easy on you, it never will be.  People who dare to challenge will always face resistance.  But Starfleet and the Federation itself would never have got where it is without the influence of people who had the courage to speak out against entrenched attitudes and assumptions.  

"So you had one moment of rebellion in five years.   I'd rather you hadn't been quite so spectacular about it, and if you do it again, I'll come down so hard on you you'll think the roof caved in; you can believe that.  But I've been a fool to let that one moment destroy all the trust and admiration I had for you as an individual and as a potential commander.  You're one of my very best officers, the tougher it gets, the more reliable you become."

Paris scrubbed his face with one hand, probably unaware of doing so or of the vulnerability the gesture seemed to reveal.  "This is all a bit much to take in."

"I appreciate that.  Tom. Without you, we wouldn't have made it this far.  We both know that.  While that's true for quite a few members of this crew, it's been your creativity and your ability to think laterally that's been directly responsible for extricating us from any number of situations.  You need to go away and do some thinking. 

"So this is what I am offering.    If you choose, you can take a permanent re-assignment to Life Sciences and a full time posting as the Doctors apprentice.  In which case, I will immediately promote you to full lieutenant, and on completion of your studies, when the doctor tells me you have the equivalent of a medical degree, I will further promote you to Lt Commander and confer on you all the protocols and authority appropriate to a Starfleet doctor.

"Or, you can stay as you are and you can be my apprentice instead.  And I will work you harder than anyone ever has in your entire life before.   You'll earn every single promotion in sweat and tears, and probably blood.  You'll deserve it in the eyes of every member of this crew.  I will never stop pushing you, demanding more of you, and neither will Tuvok or Chakotay.  We'll be worse than your father ever was, but we'll be looking at you, not your pedigree.  We'll be dealing with a practical necessity, not a theoretical possibility.  So, if I order you to every duty station on the ship, you'll do it.  If I assign you to clean out the warp plasma manifolds for a month, you'll do it.  But at the end of it you'll be fit to captain any ship in the fleet.

"That will require a certain level of trust in me because there will be times when we don't agree, and I will expect you to know when it's appropriate to back down and accept my authority.  I will also expect you to know when it isn't appropriate.  I don't want an automaton who never questions my assumptions or orders, you're not going to learn anything that way.  If you're going to command, you're going to have to learn when it's appropriate not to obey.  Sometimes you'll get it wrong and you'll be punished.  It will be harder than you can possibly imagine, but if I didn't believe completely that you were capable of it, I wouldn't make the offer.

"I can't really lose either way.  Whatever choice you make, you'll be a vital member of this crew, and I'll have one of the best officers in Starfleet.

"You think about it.  Take as long as you need.  Make the decision that's right for you, but no more running away, Tom.  I don't care if your father's proud of you; he has no right to be after what he's done.  I don't even care if I'm proud of you, but it's time you learned to be proud of yourself.  Every aspect of yourself."

He looked completely confounded.  “I…. I don’t…”

“I don’t want an answer now,” she told him.  “I want you to think this through properly.  Talk to anyone you need to – or no-one.  Come back to me before we leave, and tell me what you’ve decided.”

Assuming that he had been dismissed,  Tom got up to leave.    “I never realised…”

“Well, now you do.”

He nodded and made his way to the ready-room door.  Just as it swished open, he turned back to her.

“Thank you for telling me.”  Then he turned his back and went through the door, which closed after him, leaving her in silence.   She got up and went to the replicator for another coffee, frowning slightly,

It occurred to her that the look in his eyes hadn't looked much like pride.

It had looked more like dread.


	12. Chapter 12

 

"I don't believe it."

Chakotay sat back, glad that no one could see his face, as he knew he would have been unable to suppress the astonishment he felt at what he had just read.  "I just don't believe it," he repeated to himself, before realising he was just trying to convince himself.  In fact, thinking about it, it was all too plausible, too easy to believe.   It would never have occurred to him, but now that he knew, he wondered why he'd never seen the similarities before.

Although it had been days since he'd started his impromptu investigation, he'd found excuses to come back to it again and again.  Something had been nagging away at him ever since Janeway had made her comments about Paris to him, and he had been convinced there was something there to find.  And now he had found it.

Pieces started to fall into place.  His surprise started to give way to sympathy, and a sense of regret.  So the boy had been a sullen, sulky, lippy brat when he'd first met him, actively trying to be disliked by everyone he met.   Was it really any surprise?  What a thing to have to live with - to stare into the mirror every morning and know it was there, stamped on his face for anyone to see.  Anyone who knew, that is, else why would one make the connection?  Chakotay certainly never had. 

There was someone who had to know.  "Computer, locate Captain Janeway."

The dispassionate female voice of the computer replied, "Captain Janeway is in her quarters."

Chakotay got up at once and headed towards Janeway's quarters.  He paged her door feeling a slight prickling of apprehension. With all that had happened over the last few days, with the way she had been wrestling to sort out her feelings, particularly for Paris, he wasn't totally sure how she'd take it.  Maybe she'd think Paris had been withholding truths from her and consider it another disappointment, another betrayal, and then the cycle would start all over again.

The Captain called him in at once.  She was sitting at her table, reading, and looked up, smiling, as he entered.   She seemed relaxed, and he felt relieved.  What he had to tell her would have been impossible if she was any less than receptive.

"I didn't expect you to be here," he commented, "B'Elanna throw you out of engineering like she did me?"

"No, a certain hologram pulled rank.  Between him and Paris, half the crew are in quarters sleeping."  Janeway rolled her head slightly and reached up to knead the muscles on her neck for a moment, "Oh, they’re probably right.  Repairs are going well and they'll go a lot better tomorrow with a rested crew."

"We seem to have masked our trail well enough. Nobody's come looking for us, and there's no sign of activity anywhere in the system.  They should have been here by now - if they were coming."

"Let's hope they're not."  Janeway pushed herself up from her chair with a small grimace that indicated she was both stiff and tired, stretched, and wandered over to her cabin's wide picture windows, which looked down on the entire front sweep of the primary hull.  When the ship was in space, you really didn't notice it.  Because of the way it was angled you actually had to stand at the window to see it at all, but here, in these bright surroundings it was much more noticeable, especially since it wasn't just a flat grey surface anymore.  It was teeming with life; work crews with conduit and control areas exposed had been working there since the hour they had landed and even now that dusk was falling, they were still there, setting up work lights so they could carry on through the night.  No noise filtered through into the room though; the thick transparent aluminium which comprised the window panes didn't conduct sound.  Neelix's café, standing on the flat area right below her window was deserted of all but two lone coffee drinkers, each deep in contemplation of padds they were reading.  The windows were high enough that, like the ready room, she could see out but the people outside couldn't see in. Even though she couldn't hear, she could see the crews working on the upper hull and beyond, the treeline and the long wide sweep of golden beach on which Neelix was presently trying to organise some team games with a motley selection of off duty crew.  The sight made her smile.

"Pity I don't have any curtains," Janeway noted.  "but I'm tired enough to sleep through anything."  She indicated the flask sitting on her desk.  "Can I offer you a nightcap?"  He started to shake his head but she continued, "It's not coffee.  Neelix cut off my supply on doctor's orders.  He grudgingly made me a pot of Vulcan herb tea."

Chakotay wrinkled his nose slightly.  "Not quite my poison either."

"It's actually not all that bad."  She sat back down and poured herself another half cup.  The aroma was light and relaxing and Chakotay almost regretted his refusal, but decided she would benefit from it more than he would.  He decided her conversational tone was an invitation to make himself at home, and slid into the chair across the desk from her.  He searched for a way to introduce the subject he wanted to discuss without making it look too obvious.

"They make a good team, those two, don't they," he commented, meaning Paris and the Doctor.

She rubbed her eyes, looking as weary as he felt now that the adrenaline high of the landing was wearing off.  She plainly knew who he was talking about.  "I hate to admit it."

"Are you changing your mind about re-assigning him?"

"After this week's performance?  You've got to be kidding."

"We have other pilots."

She rested her elbows on her desk and rubbed her face with her hands.

"But none of them are as good as he is."

"Culhane..."

"Got lucky.  He knows it and I know it.  Every single crewmember who's sat at the helm over the last five years has been trained and coached by Tom.  Including you.  It isn't just talent, it isn't just training; he's gifted.  We need gifted out here.  It's not just the helm I'm thinking of, it's everything that goes with it, it's away missions, bridge liaison, a dozen other things.  He belongs in the Command line, not in Sciences."

"You told him, didn't you?"

"He thought he was just being victimised, singled out because of his name and his past.  He had to be told."

"That might cause complications in the future."

"It might," she admitted.

"You've got Kim.  He's been shaping up pretty well the last few months."

"Kim will always be a by-the-book commander.  He'll be good, I think, if he can resist trying to run before he can walk, but he doesn't have what it takes to be…"

"…Another Janeway?" he smiled to take any potential sting or sarcasm out of his words.

"If you want to put it that way.  There are hundreds, if not thousands of ship captains out there, Chakotay, and they're all exceptional men and women.  But not one in three hundred of them have the ability to think outside the square, or to inspire men to follow them through any hardship.  We both know Paris has that, if we can just get it out of him." 

"Kathryn, what if your Ugly Duckling doesn't want to be a swan?"

"As I recall, the eponymous bird didn't have much of a choice, it just happened."

"But Tom does have a choice."

"Does he?  I agree he has the choice to pursue it, but if the aptitude is there, can he avoid it forever?  That would be like a Peregrine being afraid to fly."

"He may have good reason."

She frowned.  "What are you trying to tell me?"

"I took your hint and did some research," he told her.

"About what?" she asked.

"About Tom.  About his reluctance to develop the way you want him to.   I know why."

One of the more endearing things about Kathryn Janeway was that she couldn't resist a mystery.  Her eyes and her entire face lit up with interest, the tiredness wiped away.  She came out from behind the desk and sat down on the lounger, indicating her first officer should join her.

"Now I'm intrigued." 

"I checked his service and academy records, his pre-academy records, which are patchy, for the son of an Admiral, and finally got going on his family tree."

She laughed. "That family's got a pedigree going back generations.  It reads like a who's who of Federation luminaries.  Admiral Paris's office wall back at Starfleet HQ is covered with pictures of family members who've given their entire lives to Starfleet and the Federation."

"That's the problem.  Everybody's been so busy thinking about him as a Paris, that they haven't considered his mother's side of the family."  

Janeway nodded.  "She was the daughter of another great Starfleet family, the only child, in fact.  It was really more of a political alliance, a merger of dynasties, than a love match.  But again, the Decker family history is no secret.  No skeletons in that closet."  She yawned again, massively.  "A couple of missing persons, but no skeletons."

"You're considering the male side again.   You're the last person I would have expected to fall for that.  Yes, his maternal Grandmother was Captain Jean Decker, another name that goes back five generations.   But That was her married name.  Jean’s maiden name was Henderson, and she was the daughter of Anne Henderson, a professor of biochemistry.  Anne Henderson, incidentally, was herself the daughter of an Admiral.  Jean's Father was one of Anne's students, although I had to do some digging to get this because they never married, and I got the impression the whole incident was something of a private family scandal at the time.  Just a couple of years later Jean's father was murdered.  His name was Dr David Marcus." 

Janeway frowned, "I don't recognise the name."

"You should.   It's in all the history books.  He died on Genesis."

She was close to making the connection, he could tell by the look on her face, "History says it was James Kirk's son who was killed on Genesis."

"David Marcus was Kirk's son, Captain," he told her, watching the comprehension dawn on her face.   "His only known descendent, also born outside marriage; he took his mother's name and worked as a scientist with her until he was killed.  He was one of the original Genesis scientists." 

She sat back against the couch back, her expression one of rueful wonder, "So our helmsman is descended in direct genetic line from the most famous name in Starfleet history?"

Chakotay nodded, knowing he had a smug grin on his face and not caring.  "The only living descendent."

"His sisters…"

"…are half sisters.  Different mother."

"I didn't know that.  Owen Paris never mentioned he'd married twice."

"Why should he, even to a protégé?"  Chakotay chuckled at the irony of it all. "Kirk, Deckers, Hendersons, Parises. He's got so much fissile material in his DNA I'm surprised he didn't spontaneously combust when he was conceived."

“Oh, that’s one mental image I really didn’t need.  Thank you VERY much.”

Chakotay squinted slightly, trying to work out what her mind had just conjured up, and winced when he realised what she meant.  They both started to laugh.

"Talk about a cuckoo in the nest..." she looked back up at him, making yet another connection that he hadn't actually seen, "That's it, isn't it.  His father knew!  Of course he knew, it would have been a family secret.  He expected Tom to have inherited that ability.  But Tom is nothing like Jim Kirk." 

"Nothing like?"  Chakotay asked, careful not to prejudice her opinion one way or the other.  He was surprised she hadn't seen it.

"Well," she considered out loud, "he's strong willed, intelligent, creative, more thoughtful than he allows himself to appear ... okay, so maybe he is quite like him."

It was Chakotay's turn to lean back, "Actually, if you think about it, he's extraordinarily like him.  If you look back at the older records, there's even a physical resemblance."

She shook her head, dismissing the comparison.  "It's a well-known fact that James Kirk was a very serious student at the academy."

"Kirk was brought up in a family which had no abnormal expectations of him.   He was not a genetic trophy, the first male born in that line since Kirk's own son.    From even the little you've told me about his father, that would have mattered."

From the expression on her face, other pieces were starting to fall into place too. "Tom once said to me that all through his childhood people told him he was special, that he would do 'great things' one day.  It never occurred to me that there might be a reason like this!"

"Imagine what it must be like, to be told from the day you can understand, that you have the blood of a legend flowing through your veins.  A name everyone in the Federation knows, and you're going to have to live up to that."

Janeway shook her head.  "I don't know if I can take this all in!"  She got up, started pacing the room, repairs and all other current problems temporarily forgotten.  "I served under Owen Paris for years.  I admired the man.  He always sounded so proud when he talked about his son." 

"Wouldn't you, if you thought you had the chance to go down in history by creating another legend?"

"Tom said to me - a transmitted packet of base pair sequences."  She laughed, an abrupt, self-denigrating explosion of something that most certainly was not mirth, "I thought he was talking about his father.  I don't suppose they ever let him forget it.  What kind of childhood did that boy have?"

Chakotay knew they must both guard against becoming too parental in their feelings.  The captain had caused weeks of misery by subconsciously reacting like Tom Paris' mother, and he knew that he had occasionally harboured over-protective feelings in that same time frame.  Substitute parents were the last thing Paris needed right now.  He needed reassurance, support, yes, but what he most needed was freedom.  Freedom from the tyranny of what had been passed down to him, twined in extraordinary chromosomes.  "Kathryn, whatever kind of childhood he had, it's behind him.  He's not a boy anymore.  We mustn't lose sight of that.  He's an adult, and a strong one."

She nodded, accepting that judgement.  "It's ironic isn't it.   The thing that made his early life a misery is probably also the thing that gave him the inherent ability, the strength, to survive it."

"You believe in genetic determinism?"

"No, of course not. But as a scientist, I can't afford to ignore the contribution that genetics make to characteristics, and now you've told me, it's so blindingly obvious."

"He has, at most, one sixteenth of James Kirk's DNA," Chakotay felt constrained to point out.

"Yes, but the genes could have come down untouched.  Just like a gene for hair colour can be passed down through hundreds of generations.  What made Kirk special, genetically, if anything, might have been a relatively small number of genes, and they might all have been dominants, and they might all have been passed on through five generations, however statistically unlikely that would be."  She got up and started to pace the room, deep in thought.  Chakotay watched her, saying nothing while her brain processed the information, the implications, the emotional impact.

"It explains more than his being Owen Paris's son ever could," she finally decided.  She started to laugh.  "I love it.  The Parises, the Deckers, all the other great Starfleet dynasties that have combined in those families.  All that pure line breeding, and all of it outweighed by one exceptional mongrel from a hundred years ago!  How galling."

Chakotay decided he'd given her enough time to react and cut to the chase.  "How does it change things, Kathryn?"

She sat down with a heavy sigh, the animation leaving her in a rush.  "It doesn't.  But it does give me - an insight."

He didn't say anything more, let her work things through in her own time.  She was the Captain, the ball was firmly in her court now.

“This – this thing runs deep in him.  If he were to share this secret with anyone it would have been us, here.   As far as I know, he’s not told anyone.  I think you’ve uncovered what might very well be the key to Tom Paris that I’ve been looking for for years.  Defuse this, and everything else might fall into place.”  She got up to stare out of the window again.  "Paris is a member of this family now, and I'm not going to let him suffer in it the way he suffered in his own."  She sighed, "I've handled this thing wrong from the beginning, and I've got to try to set things straight.  I'll talk to him first thing in the morning."

 

 

 

First thing in the morning, for Tom Paris, was as the sun burst over the horizon, blazing off the cobalt and sapphire sea and turning the light dusting of high, puffy clouds a glorious golden colour.  He was out on the beach to greet the dawn, having walked far enough from the ship to ensure solitude.  He had found himself a nice rock jutting out from the low promontary at the end of the curve of beach, and settled himself on it, his mind soothed into tranquility by the luminous sky and the sea so clear he could see down for metres; see bright tropical sea creatures, some with fins like terran fish, others with other evolved mechanisms of propulsion, all of them quick and colourful.  It was enough like many tropical places that he'd visited, on earth and off, to feel familiar, and at the same time different enough to remind him that this was the lure of space exploration.  Spatial anomalies and nebulas and the like were all very exciting for scientists, and they were a challenge to navigate, but the whole point, for him, was to be able to plunk yourself down and soak up the scenery, knowing that you were the very first human ever to see that sight, ever to walk that beach or sit on that rock.

He could just hear the sounds of the crew drifting back from the other end of the beach, over a kilometre away, where Voyager sat, her hull spider-webbed with makeshift scaffolds and climbing wires.  From where he was sitting he had to look back over his shoulder to see the ship, and he didn't particularly care to see her like that.  He liked to see her whole and hanging in space, her perfect curves shining silver with reflected starlight; not crippled and vulnerable, surrounded by banks of sand, her guts exposed for a hundred people to crawl over.  So he watched the fish instead, watched the way they drifted, turned, slid between the underwater foliage; beautiful in their natural element, just as Voyager was when she was in hers.

He had needed to get away.  There wasn't an inch of the ship that wasn't contaminated with noise and bustle, and he had a lot of thinking to do.  Thinking that his brain hadn't managed to do the previous night, while he was sitting staring at his quarter's wall and replaying the Captain's words over and over again.  To have her say those things to him, and to have that choice…  he just couldn't seem to get a grip on it.    To have status again... being an Ensign had been harder than he had realised the day he had stolen the Delta Flyer, knowing the likely outcome.   But then contemplating the paths laid in front of him made his heart thud with anxiety.  How could he be expected to make a decision like this?

There wasn't even anyone he could talk to about it, no one who didn't have their own agenda.  Kim wouldn't understand because he had been differently brought up and had never learned to doubt his own ability to meet a challenge.  B'Elanna and Chakotay both had very different perspectives and he knew that like Kim, they wouldn't really understand his doubts.  He could become a doctor, but he'd be giving up so much.  Up until a couple of days ago, he'd thought he no longer cared about those things but he'd been wrong.  But the other road seemed impossibly hard.  What if he failed?

He was sitting staring into the water, when a hand touched his shoulder.  He hadn't heard anyone approach, being deep in contemplation, but he didn't have to look around to know who it was. The gesture was familiar and it occurred to him that he'd missed it over the last few months.  The hand seemed to fit there particularly well, it always had.  He had felt privileged, knowing that she rarely used the gesture with anyone else.  Her withdrawal of contact had seemed to him to be part of the overall process of withdrawal which had affected both of them in the months since the incident with the Moneans.  The gesture was more than one of comfort, it was a kind of tacit signalling that she was prepared to take a step towards him.

Paris was pretty good at picking up emotional information from expressions and body language.  With the Captain, it was far more than that, it always had been.  Recently he hadn't been looking because when he did all he saw was a closed kind of coldness.  But that was over, their unconscious communication channel was back open, he only had to glance up at her for a second to know with complete certainty what it was she was thinking.

It made him uneasy.  No matter what the consequences, he wished she hadn't had to find out.   

After a few moments of contact, he broke the silence.

"You know."

She didn't seem the slightest bit surprised. "Chakotay did some extra-curricular reading."

"Chakotay's got a big mouth."

"Well your father hasn't.  He never let it slip. I had no idea."

He regretted his impulse of a few days before to open up to her.  "I should never have said those things.  It was bound to make you curious."

"Perhaps, underneath, you really wanted me to find out."

He had nothing to say in answer to that that didn't sound trite or condescending, so he kept his mouth shut.  He didn't quite trust himself to turn and look at her so he continued to look out over the sea.

A few seconds later, she moved to sit down on an out-jutting of rock nearly in front of him, not quite blocking his view, but intruding enough into his field of vision that he was forced to acknowledge her gaze.   She was searching his face, examining it carefully.   He smiled ruefully.

"Now you're doing it." He told her.

"What?"  She asked.

"What they all do, when they know.   Looking for similarities."

She acknowledged the truth of his accusation with a brief nod and dragged her gaze from his face, fixing on his hands instead, resting on his knees in front of him.  He wondered if she was looking for similarities there, as well.

"How long have you known?"  she asked him.   

He shrugged.  "I can't remember a time I didn't know.   Or know what it meant, or know that it was a secret that had to be kept at all costs."

"Why a secret?  I'd have thought your father would have wanted it known."

"I think he wanted to present me 'fully formed', the perfect heir.  I guess he didn't want people staring at a snotty nosed kid and thinking, 'that's it?'  Of course, he didn't always practice what he preached.   I've been stared at in awe by more admirals than you've had hot dinners."

She didn't reply to his self deprecating remark, and after a moment, he amended, "Well, not that many.  Maybe five."

He wondered if there was any point trying to say more.  He didn't want to invite her pity - didn't want pity, from her or anyone.  He just wanted what he'd always wanted, his own identity, away from the shadow of his father and that other shadow that he tried not to think about that fell on him from a hundred years distant.

"Gives new meaning to the word 'pedigree', doesn't it?"  he finally commented.

"I can't imagine what it must have been like for you," she reached out to place her hands over his, they felt warm and solid and reassuring.  "I can't imagine how I would have felt, if it had been me."  She very gently took hold of his chin and turned his head towards her, studied him intently.  He forced himself to endure her close scrutiny; better to get it over with.

"I know you probably don't want to hear this, but there are similarities.  You are like him in a lot of ways."

"So I've been told."  More times, in fact, than he could ever have counted.  "But not in any of the ways that matter, according to my father."

She spoke firmly, without any visible doubt.  "Your father had no right to ask you to live up to those kind of expectations.  They must have been crushing.  You've been told all your life that you have to live up to that pedigree, and it's terrified you, as it would terrify anyone."  She moved closer to him and gathered up his hand in both of hers, holding it in her lap and stroking it slightly, seemingly without any conscious thought that she was doing it.

"People like Kirk happen because they're the right people in the right place at the right time.  They happen because they're allowed to happen, not because they're being deliberately shaped.   What you make out of what you've inherited isn't for some breeder of thoroughbreds to decide.   What they did to you was wrong, Tom.   I'm ashamed it's taken me this long to realise it."  She smiled at him, adopting a cautiously teasing tone for just a second.  "Even if your father never showed me your entry in the Starfleet Pedigree Records."  She became serious again.  "I'm frankly surprised you turned out as well as you did.  Most people I know would have been destroyed by a childhood like yours, a burden like that.   That you only went seriously off the rails once is a tribute to you as an individual, your strength and your sense.  I don't care where you inherited those traits from, you have them, and they've made you a good person.  The only person who doesn't see that is you."  

"You haven't been all that receptive recently…"

"I know.  And I'm not saying it's going to change overnight.  Sometimes you're enough to try the patience of an archangel, never mind an overworked ship's captain who never could understand why you were so damn reluctant to be everything you could be."   She sighed.  "I'm as guilty as your father; assuming that I had the right to dictate your future, and the right to get offended when you didn't make the choices I wanted you to.  I gave you that choice with the best of intentions, but I was wrong.  Again.  With that kind of history behind you, I shouldn't expect you to make decisions like that."

 

 

Janeway watched the play of emotions across Tom's face and got the sense that he was perhaps a little bit overwhelmed with everything.  She couldn't really blame him.  Just a week ago, she was barely speaking to him.  His secret must have been dammed up inside him for all the years she had known him, buried as deep as he could push it but always there, always lurking, always threatening to undermine what little confidence he'd managed to build up in his own right.   How he’d picked up that she had known, she didn’t understand, there was no way he could have known about her conversation with Chakotay the night before, no way he could have known about the research Chakotay had been doing.  She wasn’t surprised; so often in the last five years he had seemed to pick up something she was thinking with unerring accuracy, maybe she really was just that easy for him to read. 

"Let's go back to the ship," she suggested.

As they walked, she asked him, "You know you're going to have to confront this, sooner or later, don't you."

He didn't answer.

"You can't put it off forever," she persisted.

"I know."

"But?"

"It just makes life a bit more difficult.  You knowing, I mean.  Before, even if it had occurred to you, it would have just been coincidence.   Now, every time I look or move or sound a certain way, you won't be able to help make the connection.  You'll make judgements based on that knowledge."

"I won't.  I didn't know yesterday, and I still mean what I said."

"Can you be sure? How long before this is all over the ship?"

She got the strong sense that her answer would be crucial to the progress she felt she'd made with him over the last couple of days.  Her reaction could set the tone for his future life on board the ship, and the feeling of responsibility pierced her gut.  She chose her words very carefully. 

"Would it matter?  You've hidden from this all your life.  Your family made it into an obsession, and it didn't need to be.  To most people on this ship, it will be a curiosity, a subject of gossip for a few days, and that's all.  You and I, we grew up with the legend of the Enterprise as part of our identities in prominent Starfleet families.  For the majority of the crew, that just isn't true.  The name of Kirk doesn't have the same weight to them as it does to us."   

He looked sceptical and hopeful all at the same time and they walked in silence for a few seconds before she went on.

"You didn't get your gift for piloting from your father - he couldn't fly to save his life.  And you didn't get it from Kirk, he hardly ever sat at his own helm.  That ability is yours alone.  And if you have inherited some unique quality that made him different, don't deny it, use it.  Use it to make the life you want.  Oh - and I almost forgot."  She stopped walking, fished out the little dark pip that had been sitting in her uniform's small concealed pocket and leant over to pin it back onto his collar where it belonged - where it had always belonged.  He stood motionless, poised, his head tilted very slightly away to the other side, probably unconsiously to give her better access.  There was a strange sort of smile on his face and she wondered if he was trying to conceal what he was feeling.  It wasn't working.  She could feel the relief, surprise and pride almost as if she were telepathic with him.

"No  conditions, no agreements.  No demands.  It's over.  We'll put this behind us and start fresh."

"Thank you."  His voice was almost a whisper, so quiet that she barely heard it over the swish of the surf breaking under their feet.

They both became aware of noise from the direction of the ship and turned to look.  At least half the crew were congregated on the upper hull, looking in their direction.  Clapping and wolf whistles and various other raucous sounds of appreciation floated across to them. 

They looked at each other.

"Kim," they simultaneously decided, then both started to laugh.

"How the devil did he know?" she wondered.

"Personally, I'm convinced we have a temporal displacement somewhere in the rumour mill.  It's the only reasonable explanation."

"Either that, or Chakotay spilled the beans."

"He's been doing a lot of that recently."

"I'm starting to see your point.  I shall have to have a little chat with him."

Still chuckling, they started to walk back towards the ship, as the congregation that had been watching them started to get back to work, and left them mostly unobserved.

After a few more moments walking, Paris very tentatively asked, "That offer - just how long will it stay open?"

"For as long as you want.  You can decide next week or next month or next year, or not at all.  I want you to be sure that what you decide about your future is not your father's choice, or mine, or your ancestral spirits' - no ones but your own."

After a moment, he nodded.

"I… I want…"

"Go on…" she prompted, gently.

"I want it all," he finally told her.  "I want to be a doctor, and the best damn pilot in the quadrant, and a captain, a published holo author, and who knows what else?    My father's expectations were never the problem.  Mine were."

She shook her head firmly.  "No, I won't have you blaming yourself.  You were given good reasons to develop unrealistic expectations, and as a child you didn't have the emotional resources you needed to put it all into perspective.  I can just imagine you as a child, rushing headlong into everything.  And then you got burned - badly, and decided that maybe you shouldn't have any expectations for yourself because that way you couldn't disappoint yourself."

"I guess that's about right."   

"Those expectations aren't unreasonable.  But you can't expect to achieve them all at once, and all together.  Pick one fence at a time to jump, and you can do all of those things.  And I'm not saying that because I've been staring at your geneological chart.  I'm saying it because I know you.  You just have to develop a little more faith in yourself."

"I know but, It's hard."

She smiled to herself, remembering something the Doctor had told her several days before.  "Worthwhile things usually are, aren't they?" 

 

 

In the end, they spent over a month on the planet, which proved to have every resource they could possibly need.

The people who had attacked them on the outskirts of the solar system never showed up looking for them, although the crew took it in turns to maintain a shuttlecraft patrol.  As the days slipped by it became increasingly likely that the fleet which had attacked them had either been operating independently and without contact with their base, or had been a much longer range patrol than they had at first supposed.   Whatever the reason, the long layover had resulted in a rested and revitalised crew, and a captain who felt renewed and as if a great weight had fallen from her.   She was almost reluctant to set the date and time for their departure, but there was no point putting it off any longer,  the ship was ready and so was the crew.  As she took her place on the bridge she looked around in wonder at what 140 people had managed to achieve in such a short time.

Yet again, they'd rebuilt the conn station, but now the rest of the bridge looked gleaming and new as well - which it mostly was.  The cargo holds were brimming with resources, edible and otherwise, from the planet.  Neelix was in hogs heaven, having never seen such a succulent and nutritious selection of fruits, nuts and berries before, and earlier she'd actually caught B'Elanna polishing a spot on the Warp Core casing.  The ship looked as if she had been lain over at a major Starfleet dockyard for an overhaul - the crew couldn't have done a better job on her.  The faces on the bridge around her looked tanned and relaxed.  

“All departments report ready, Captain,”  Kim told her.

Except that there was one station which was glaringly unoccupied.  Just as she was about to remark on it,  Paris hurried on to the bridge, looking slightly like he’d been caught in a whirlwind.  “Sorry,  sorry,  clinic ran over.  Sunburn.”

“You don’t look sunburned, Mr Paris,” she remarked. 

“Not me,  Sam Wildman.  And the rest is Doctor/Patient privilege.”

He slid into the helm seat as if he'd never been away.  He swept the console area once with his gaze, touched a couple of panels almost imperceptibly to bring the functions on line.

It was the most curious of sensations.  Janeway got the distinct feeling that Voyager had just woken up, that the ship was alert and paying attention, almost quivering in its eagerness to be unleashed.

She leaned towards Chakotay and asked him in an undertone;  "Did I just imagine that?"

Her First Officer was suppressing a smile, but he didn't look confused at the question.

"You must have done," he replied in a similarly low voice.

She settled back, feeling perfectly content.

"Mr Paris, take us up."

"Aye, Captain," he acknowledged with crisp precision.  His fingers flew lightly over the console, and a couple of seconds later Voyager lifted without apparent effort and swooped lightly upwards, out over the blue curve of the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't normally do this, because I think a story should stand up by itself without justification from the author but this one is special to me personally for a number of reasons. One reason is that during the period that I wrote it, I was going through a depression and this was the one which I used as something of a cathartic mechanism which helped to work through and ultimately, come out the other end. 
> 
> Mostly however, I think this one of all my stories most clearly sums up the frustration that I was feeling with the show during its run, as it changed from something which I was really quite happy with, which had drawn me in and made me care about all the characters, to something that really annoyed me. Every time I watched a new episode, I came away unsatisfied. Unsatisfied with the development of the characters (some of whom were never really developed once Seven came along) and unsatisfied with the quality and depth of the stories, particularly from the fourth season on. Yes, there were some gems in there, if not I probably would have given up long before the series' end, but not enough. The potential that I had seen in the characters (all of them, but certainly when I first started watching my favourites were Captain Janeway and Tom Paris) to develop in new and interesting directions just didn't seem to be being fulfilled. I'd always thought that they'd be good together (hence the fact that pretty much all of my Voyager writing tends in that direction) but also I never saw the point of the Tom/B'elanna relationship other than to render him into a bland 'insignificant other' who never got any story development unless it involved her, so it was really always more about her than him, and once they put him in that relationship, they clearly considered the character 'finished' and didn't challenge him with anything else. I felt that the character who had early on demonstrated that he could strike off on his own on a spy mission, or could win the ship back from the Kazon only with the help of another species and two remaining characters on board, clearly here was a character who was capable of doing much more than was being asked of him. So out of my frustration was born this, which goes in what I hope is an unexpected direction at the end. 
> 
> So, anyone who is expecting Tom to get back with B'elanna in this story, sorry, not going to happen. If you're reading for that, please don't waste your time. I don't want to be responsible for your disappointment. 
> 
> Warning; this is a story which absolutely centres around Paris and Janeway. It's quite long.


End file.
